


Liquid Courage

by Rizandace



Series: Magic Curses [3]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-20 07:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20223829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizandace/pseuds/Rizandace
Summary: Eliot had returned to the bedroom, immaculately dressed in fine Fillorian garb, before Q had even finished getting dressed. Which meant that Q was actually shirtless, hair still rumpled from sleep, and at his most vulnerable, when Eliot gave him a strange look, his fingers fiddling with the buttons on his vest, and said -"Quentin. I really don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it." And then he'd swallowed, clenched his jaw once, and stilled the motion of his hands. He leveled Q with an even, piercing stare, and said: "We need to break up."[...]Quentin blinked, the reality of the moment slamming into him. Suddenly, he wasn't heartbroken or devastated or betrayed, just... fucking panicked. Because if Eliot was breaking up with him, something was wrong with Eliot.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> There's really no requirement that you read the other stories in this series in order to understand this one. All you really need to know is that this is post S-4, in a world where everything happened just the same except for Quentin dying, because fuck that noise honestly. From there, Q and Eliot got back together and are living happily in Fillory. Margo and Fen are ruling as High King and Queen, and they are in a relationship with Josh. And back on Earth, Julia and Alice are a couple.
> 
> I should also let you know that this story was hard to write, for very different reasons than the last couple of stories. The angst is just as angst-y, but it comes from a completely different direction. As always, I give this my patented happy-ending guarantee!

**QUENTIN**

Eliot was fidgeting. Which was unusual, and generally not a good sign. But it still wasn't much of a warning, Quentin had thought to himself later, given what was about to happen. Then again, Eliot had been acting strangely all week, a little distant and distracted, and Quentin had known his partner was working up to discuss something with him.

Quentin had been worried, of course, but in an abstract sort of way. He figured whatever it was, the two of them were more than equal to the challenge. Given everything they'd been through over the entire course of their relationship, he really couldn't imagine any piece of news that would be capable of obliterating their lives.

But then.

It was morning, and Quentin had woken alone. Not in and of itself unusual, although a bit disappointing. Eliot had returned to the bedroom, immaculately dressed in fine Fillorian garb, before Q had even finished getting dressed. Which meant that Q was actually shirtless, hair still rumpled from sleep, and at his most vulnerable, when Eliot gave him a strange look, his fingers fiddling with the buttons on his vest, and said - 

"Quentin. I really don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it." And then he'd swallowed, clenched his jaw once, and stilled the motion of his hands. He leveled Q with an even, piercing stare, and said: "We need to break up."

So.

Yeah.

For twenty seconds or so, Quentin's heart broke. He felt dizzy, and alone, and like his entire life had been unmoored in the flash of an instant. Eliot was still talking, saying empty, cliche platitudes about _moving in different directions_ or something like that, but Q couldn't really hear him through the pounding in his own temples. He'd sat down on the still un-made bed, his shirt gripped in his fists, while Eliot apologized to him. Quentin's broken brain began screaming unkind words into the void of his soul - things like y_ou really should have seen this coming_ and _of course he's leaving you, did you really think you'd get to have this for the rest of your life?_ and _the only surprise is that it took him this long to get sick of you_.

But then?

The twenty seconds ended, and Quentin blinked, the reality of the moment slamming into him with a completely different kind of force. Suddenly, he wasn't heartbroken or devastated or betrayed, just... fucking panicked. Because if Eliot was breaking up with him, something was wrong with Eliot.

This wasn't hubris, it was simply knowledge - Q could still be incredibly insecure sometimes, but he and Eliot were solid. So solid. Engaged to be married, in fact, as of just a month ago. Q might have a hard time understanding _why_ Eliot would love him with such fervor and devotion sometimes, but just because he didn't fully understand it, didn't mean he _doubted_ it. Not anymore. Not after everything. So, the words:

"Quentin, I'm sorry, but I don't think... I just don't think this is what I want anymore" from Eliot, translated in Quentin's mind to something like _I've been bewitched or mind-controlled or someone's threatening my life or _your_ life and making me do this_.

"What the fuck is going on?" Q asked, eyes narrowed. He took a step towards Eliot, ignored it when Eliot backed away from him, and grabbed his face between his hands. "Are you okay?"

"Quentin," Eliot said. He sounded apologetic and weary but not unduly devastated, and he took Q's hands off of the sides of his face gently, squeezing them once before letting them drop. He met Q's eyes evenly, his own gaze steady and calm. "Quentin, I will always care so much about you. But this... this isn't who I am."

"Eliot, you're sick, or... you're being manipulated, or something. Let's go find Margo," Quentin said patiently, coming forward again. This time, when Eliot took a step backwards, Q let him, narrowing his eyes and studying every minute twitch of Eliot's lips and eyebrows. Looking for a sign that would explain what the hell was actually going on here. 

"I know this is going to suck for you," Eliot said. "I'm not going to pretend this was an easy decision, but it's over. It's done. Please don't make this harder than it has to be." 

Q rolled his eyes, still feeling that grip of anxiety tight in his throat. He knew this wasn't real, knew there had to be something else going on, but that didn't make it easy to hear these words from Eliot's own lips. Some old, uncomfortable insecurities were wriggling their way up from the deep recesses of his mind, and he really didn't want to remember a time when he would have had no trouble believing Eliot didn't want him - because why would _Eliot Waugh_ of all people, settle for someone like Quentin Coldwater?

"You're going to be so fucked up over this when you snap out of it," Quentin said sternly to Eliot. "When you realize what you're saying."

"There's nothing to snap out of," Eliot said, still annoyingly calm. "And I was - I _am_ fucked up about it. I honestly didn't expect this to happen." 

"So what did happen, then?" Q snapped. "Because a week ago, you and I were fine. You and I were - fucking perfect. And then you're suddenly acting all cagey, and then today suddenly it's over? Explain that."

It wasn't a serious question, not in the way it sounded. There _wasn't_ a logical explanation for this. But Q was hoping Eliot might say something that would help him to make sense of what was going on. Maybe he'd pinpoint a moment or an encounter that had caused his shift in behavior, and that would be Quentin's clue.

"I... Quentin, I don't think there's a rational explanation. I wish I could give you the closure you deserve. You will always mean so much to - "

"Okay, just - stop," Quentin interrupted, frustrated. He was aching at the words, like they had a physical impact on him. "Fine, just - okay. I can't be here right now. We'll talk about this later."

He left Eliot in their bedroom in Whitespire castle, and without conscious decision, made his way straight to Margo.

* * *

** _One Week Earlier_ **

** **ELIOT** **

_Like all days in his life that ended in in catastrophe, this particular Fillorian morning had started off so perfectly ordinary._

_He'd woken up before Q, stared at him with moon-eyes for a long, uninterrupted moment, without fear of ridicule, and then gotten up and ready for his day. Quentin had awoken shortly thereafter, they'd eaten breakfast, and then gone about their various tasks for the day, Eliot helping Fen organize some resources on crop rotations, and Quentin working with some Fillorian educators on a plan to create accessible schooling for more Fillorian children._

_Very mundane, very peaceful, but oddly exciting, too - Q and Eliot had only been back in Fillory for four nights, after their extended Earth vacation. That Earth vacation had included lots of quality time with Julia and Alice, and it had included Eliot's proposal to Quentin, which had gone over astoundingly well. But their time on Earth had also involved finding themselves a magician therapist, who was helping them through their little co-dependency issue._

_Therapy had been good so far, for Eliot and Quentin both, but that didn't mean all of their problems were magically solved. Eliot was better at talking about it now, the overwhelming thing between them, the kind of love that blotted out the rest of the world, leaving only the two of them at the center of the universe. They were better at talking about the dark side of that love, too - the passion turned to terror whenever they had to contemplate the danger of their lives, and the possibility of loss._

_But just because they'd gotten better at talking about it, didn't mean Eliot felt any less unhinged when Q was in trouble._

_And about half way through this utterly normal day, Margo had burst into the room, wild-eyed and loud, and informed him that Q was in trouble._

_And so Eliot may have lost his mind a little bit._

_"How the fuck did he get kidnapped? _Kidnapped,_ Margo! He was supposed to be with the villagers - "_

_"Well, yes."_

_"You're telling me Quentin Fucking Coldwater, experienced adventurer and Magician, was taken hostage by a bunch of angry Fillorian villagers?"_

_"El, calm down," Margo said. Eliot felt a bit like he was under water. There was a sharp pain along his scalp and he realized abruptly that he was pulling on his hair, hard. He tried to stop, but it was starting to get a little bit hard to breathe._

_"I will not calm down! Where the fuck is he? Is he _hurt_?"_

_"I get the impression," Margo said, and even through his growing panic, Eliot recognized that she was the tiniest bit hesitant. He narrowed his eyes, willing her to speak faster. "I get the impression that he probably could have gotten away, but he didn't want to escalate - "_

_"Fuck that!" Eliot said, the words hurting as they tore their way out of his chest. "Fuck that, fuck de-escalation, we've got to do something - we need to _get him back_."_

_And for a while there, he lost track of time, his breathing harsh in his ears, his heart thumping in his throat. There were dark spots in front of his eyes, and Margo appeared to be speaking to him from a great distance, down a tunnel._

_"You need breathe, El," Margo was saying. There were hands on his shoulders, probably Bambi's, but the spots in front of his eyes were growing bigger and bigger and he was having a hard time focusing on anything in the room._

_"He's - he could be - we need - " he gasped._

_"Deep breaths," another voice said from his left. Fen, maybe. When the fuck had she gotten there? Oh God oh God he was shaking, everything in him - this was a panic attack, wasn't it? Jesus, it had been years since he'd -_

_"Eliot." A lower voice. Josh. "Eliot, man, Quentin needs you to pull yourself together, okay?"_

_That helped - maybe. A little bit. It was hard to tell. But the idea of it - Quentin needs you - burned through Eliot like fire, and after some indescribable length of time, he felt the world stop spinning around him. He could sense his own physical body again and know that it wasn't trying to destroy him from the inside. He blinked, dislodging some tears, and spoke, far past caring about the wrecked and warbling sound of his own voice. "What do we know? Where could he be?"_

_Leave it to Quentin Coldwater to get himself kidnapped in their first week back in Fillory._

_Leave it to Eliot to fucking let this happen. Oh, God. What if he was dead, what if he was already gone, Eliot was going to -_

_Someone slapped him hard. He would have expected Margo, but it was actually Fen, who looked a little shocked at her daring. But her lips were set into a firm line. "Get a hold of yourself, Eliot."_

_"Jesus, Fen," Margo said, sounding a little impressed. Eliot hiccuped out something approaching a laugh, and felt the urge to tell his pretty little ex-wife that slapping people was _not_ the recommended treatment for panic attacks, actually - and then he realized he was still hysterical, and snapped his jaw shut, hard. He swallowed a few times, until he thought he could speak without cracking up._

_"What are we doing to get him back?" he asked, his throat ragged with the effort of keeping his voice level._

_The situation was relatively simple - a group of frightened and incompetent peasants had availed themselves of the opportunity to get one-on-one time with Former-King Quentin Coldwater, and had kidnapped him for ransom. Their demands were simple, their need clear. And after it was all over, Eliot had been able to appreciate the fact that Quentin had never been in serious danger, and had in fact been through a hell of a lot worse - many, many times. This was hardly a blip on the radar of their insane lives. Q didn't even seem all that perturbed about it. They'd just told him he couldn't leave, so he'd sat down and let them argue among themselves until Margo and Eliot had shown up and gotten him out._

_No big deal. Seriously._

_But while it was happening - God, Eliot had wanted to die. Or kill someone. Or both._

_Of all people, it had been Tick who had come up with the solution. He'd pulled Eliot aside at one point during the proceedings, and Eliot had gone willingly enough. At this point he was mostly a rag-doll, pliant and uncomprehending in the face of everyone else's active pursuit of solutions. He was worse than useless, and he knew it, but he couldn't blink without imagining Quentin in distress, and the thought of it had turned his brains to mush._

_"I have something for you," Tick said gently, and he produced a small vial. "It will calm your nerves, suppress the strength of your emotions."_

_Eliot blinked at him. "It - what?"_

_"It's temporary," Tick went on, still talking to him like he was disturbed in the head. Which, hey, maybe he was. "But it will make everything feel a bit more - bearable."_

_"I don't think getting high is the answer," Eliot said. "For once."_

_But Tick was shaking his head, emphatic. "It's not that type of drug. It will grant you focus, dull the intensity of your panic, just until he is returned to you."_

_Eliot had gotten a bit better about taking candy from strangers since his wild youth, but Tick was trustworthy. Or, sort of, anyway. Trustworthy enough not to attempt assassination in such a blatant manner. That was about as far as Eliot's faculties would go, in terms of questioning whether or not this was a good idea. And so, he had downed the potion._

_It had been tasteless, hardly more than a swallow. He could feel it shivering down through his chest and into his gut, and then - _

_It had worked _instantly_. The roar of fear and desperate love faded, leaving Eliot clear-headed and capable in the blink of an eye. He knew that getting Quentin back was important, but the devastating emotions that came with the contemplation of failure were all but gone, an easily ignored background texture to his feelings._

_He'd been able to take charge of the situation with aplomb, working with Margo and Fen on a swift and firm response to the peasant's demands, one that would get Quentin back (obviously the first priority) while maintaining authority, and addressing the needs of the desperate people who had taken such drastic measures. Evidently, many of the adults in this nearby village had been killed in the recent Serpent Wars, and felt their troubles were being ignored by the nobility. Eliot had left the political dealings to the High King and Queen for the time being, keeping his focus on his partner._

_It had all resolved itself within a couple of hours, and when Q had been back in his arms, Eliot felt relieved. Sure, maybe it was a bit muted, maybe his heart didn't turn over in his chest when they reunited, the way it usually did when Q kissed him, but... well, it was like Tick said. The potion was temporary. He'd wake up in the morning and probably cry his eyes out as the full impact of their latest near-miss hit him. For now, he had Quentin back, and he could breathe._

* * *

**QUENTIN**

"What?!" Margo screeched. "He _what_?"

"Dumped me," Quentin said again.

"That's fucking - that's insane."

"No arguments here. I was hoping that maybe he might have talked to you, that you'd have some clue."

"If Eliot was talking about dumping you, I would have - I would have known something bat-shit insane was going on, and I would have come to you," Margo said severely. "You know that, don't you?"

"Yeah," Q said, unaccountably grateful. They were in the throne room, bright light from the late morning spilling through the windows, and Quentin stared out at the brightly lit grounds, trying to blink back the feel of tears. "Yeah, I do know that. I just - I'm freaking out a little bit."

"He's being an idiot. He's got cold feet, or some stupid shit, and I'm going to _kick his ass_," Margo said.

Quentin shook his head, appreciative for the protective impulse, but Margo wasn't grasping what he was saying. "I think there's something weird happening."

"Yeah, no shit - "

"_No_, I mean I think maybe he's like - in trouble, Margo."

Margo's teeth clicked together in an audible snap. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, he wasn't - he wasn't _Eliot_. He was weird and formal and it was like it wasn't even that big a deal to him. I don't think this is a cold feet situation, Margo. Honestly I think El and I are beyond that sort of thing. I'm worried he's being controlled or influenced, or... or, I don't know. It wasn't _right_."

Margo tapped a finger against her lips. She crossed the room took a seat on her throne, and Quentin came to stand next to her, leaning a hip casually against the arm. It was a testament to the seriousness of the situation that Margo didn't make some sort of biting remark about Q's lack of deference.

"We'll figure this out. Maybe - did his memory seem altered at all?" Margo ventured.

"I don't think so," Quentin mused. "He seemed completely normal. I mean, he's been weird all week - "

"Weird how?"

"Weird like... distant."

"When did it start?" Margo was always good at cutting to the quick of things. Quentin bit his lip, thinking.

"I'm pretty sure... I think it started right after that whole angry villagers incident."

"You mean the _Quentin is an idiot and gets himself kidnapped_ incident?"

"That seems a little lengthy, as far as titles go," Quentin said, frowning. Margo flicked him in the arm in lieu of a retort. "But yeah, after I got back. He wasn't... um... he was just a little bit off, I think. At the time I just chalked it up to him being concerned."

Margo snorted. "_Concerned_. Listen, Q, _I_ was concerned. Fen and Josh and Tick were concerned. Eliot was apoplectic. Like - _huge_ overreaction. Fen had to slap him."

"Seriously?" Quentin said, eyebrows raised. "Because I actually thought he seemed pretty well composed, when I came back."

"He - really?" Margo shot back, equally surprised. "Quentin, he had a _total meltdown_. I mean, he got it together eventually, he did that compartmentalizing thing where he got all serious and down-to-business. But I thought for sure he'd be a weepy mess once the two of you were alone."

Quentin frowned, trying to make sense of this. That day had been weird, for obvious reasons. He hadn't really felt a great deal of mortal terror when the peasants had informed him that he wasn't allowed to leave, but still. Being held captive, however incompetently, is bound to wear a person out. So when he'd gotten back to the castle, and Eliot had greeted him with a warm hug and a soft "I'm glad you're safe," and _not_ a bunch of hysterical crying, Q hadn't complained. He figured Eliot was handling it well, or was pretending to handle it well so he could better take care of Quentin.

And their lives were _busy_, so if Eliot seemed a little distracted, or distant, over the next couple of days, Q could hardly be blamed for not being instantly alarmed. In fact, his feeling of unease had only just started to creep up to the point where he planned on addressing it, when Eliot suddenly sprung the whole "let's break up" conversation on him, out of the clear blue sky.

"He - wasn't," Quentin finally replied, hesitating over his response to Margo's words. "He was calm. He's been calm all week. We - uh. Um. There's also... um." Quentin stopped, his brows coming together over his eyes, suddenly sheepish.

Margo rolled her eyes at him and snapped a hand at his chest, hitting him with unsurprising ferocity. "I've literally had a threesome with you two, so I don't think there's any need to be _coy_, baby Q. If Eliot's in trouble here, I need all the sex-life-related deets, too - _spill_."

"Okay, fine. He's being - he _was_ being, all this past week - _perfunctory_ about it."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Like - serviceable?" Quentin said. "Still good," he put in, with the odd and somewhat hilarious urge to protect Eliot's sexual reputation, "but not - um. Not as _intense_ as it usually is?"

Margo waggled her eyebrows at him, ignoring Quentin's tightened lips. "Okay. So, he had an underwhelming reaction to being reunited with you after the _incident_, and he's been calm and a little distant with you all week, and the sex hasn't been rocking your world. Accurate summary?"

"Good enough."

"Do you think - do you think he's _possessed_, or something?" she tried to ask the question casually, but it actually froze the blood in Quentin's veins a little bit. He hadn't considered that horrifying possibility. And now every time over the past few days that Eliot had touched him took on a completely different significance. If that wasn't _Eliot_ \- but no. He couldn't go through that again. It was too much for any one man to be expected to handle. He'd spent months with the Monster, at first living with the bone-deep numbness of Eliot's death, and then after that, terrified every second that the thing inside of Eliot was going to hurt its host and break Quentin's heart.

"No," he said finally, coughing to clear his throat. "I don't - I don't think it's possession. If it is, then whatever it is would have to know Eliot _really_ well. Like I said, he's been acting strangely, but I think I'd have noticed if it was an entirely different person."

Margo pursed her lips and nodded, seeming to accept this. "Okay, so maybe not possession. Maybe... mind control?"

"You don't think someone's like... blackmailing him, do you?" Quentin asked. It sounded like a stupid theory when he said it out loud, but this was Margo. And it was Eliot. He wasn't about to leave any stone unturned.

"Blackmailing him to break up with you? Who the fuck would do something like that?"

"I don't know," Quentin said. "Just - what if he's being forced, in some way - "

"He would find a way to give you a hint," Margo said, with decision. "Or, if not you, then me. Or someone."

"So then, do you think he's being magically influenced?"

Margo pinched the bridge of her nose and huffed out a sigh that was almost impatient. "You two have the most rotten fucking luck."

Q laughed, although it felt like the literal last thing he wanted to do. "Margo, I don't know what to do. Talking to him was like talking to a brick wall. I have nowhere to start, to even make a guess of what happened."

"I'll talk to him," Margo said. She generally wasn't very good at sounding soothing, but Quentin could tell she was trying. "Maybe I'll pick up on a clue. But for now, let's get you started on the heartbreak recovery road. Do you need ice cream? Because we might need to do an Earth run for the good stuff."

"I'm not - it's not a real breakup, Margo."

"Sure, and you know that intellectually. That doesn't mean it's not _painful_."

And loath as Quentin was to admit it, Margo was right. Margo usually was.

* * *

**MARGO**

Even operating under the assumption that this whole breakup bullshit wasn't real, Quentin was still taking it pretty hard. After their discussion over the various possible excuses for Eliot's behavior, Margo had ushered the poor little lamb into her inner chambers, and summoned Fen and Josh to help comfort him. She'd planned on finding Eliot once she knew Quentin was in good hands, but honestly there was a big part of her that didn't want to leave Q. Maybe Eliot hadn't meant it, maybe something bizarre and magical was disrupting their lives _yet again_, but still. Eliot had clearly hurt Quentin, and badly. Margo, loath to admit even now how much of a soft spot she had for Quentin, found herself cuddling up with him on a couch, offering him physical comfort as much as she was able.

"You should go find him," Quentin said to her, his eyebrows scrunched together in that adorably concerned way of his. "All of you should, honestly. Talk to him, see if you can find out what's going on."

"There will be time enough for that," Fen said gently, petting a hand through his hair.

"Uh, Q," Josh said, uncertain. "I know you think something fishy is going on here, but is there really no possibility that he's just being a dick? Like, no offense, but Eliot can be - "

"None taken," Quentin said, laughing. It was a painful sound, and Margo's hand gripped tighter against his shoulder in response. "But yeah, I'm pretty sure something weird's happening. I can't explain it, exactly, but he was acting... _off_."

As if on cue, there was a sound at the door, and Eliot entered without even knocking.

"Bambi," Eliot's voice called out, interrupting a somewhat indignant exclamation from Fen at the lack of courtesy. "Listen, you and I need to get seriously day-drunk this afternoon, because I - oh." Margo's hand was still on Quentin's shoulders. Josh and Fen were gaping at him. "Hey," Eliot said, his tone more cautious.

He was extremely, and unavoidably, _Eliot_. Margo knew him as well as she knew her own soul, and she could see in Eliot's eyes that this wasn't a possession situation, at the very least. He was carrying a bottle of wine in each hand, dual-wielding, and his gaze slid from Margo over to Quentin with uncertainty. "I didn't know you'd be here," he said to Quentin. Not cold, exactly, but definitely not warm. Margo frowned, feeling a surge of protectiveness.

"You jackass," Josh said, and Margo bit back a grin at his audacity. Normally, outstanding sex notwithstanding, she'd berate Josh for daring to speak to Eliot that way. But fuck if she wasn't firmly on Josh's side, all of a sudden.

"Excuse me?" Eliot frowned.

"What's wrong with you?" Josh continued, and Fen, speaking over him, said: "You should be _ashamed_ of yourself."

Fen was still petting her hands through Quentin's hair, and Quentin was actually allowing it, clearly craving the comfort. Margo felt her heart give a lurch of sympathy towards him. She'd rarely, if ever, been more infuriated with Eliot.

She turned to her dearest friend in the whole world and gave him the full benefit of an ice bitch stare, hands on hips and chest out. "We're hanging out with Quentin right now," she said. And Eliot blinked at her, looking hurt.

"Bambi," he said, his eyebrows scrunched together. "I - look, I really need to talk to you, okay?"

Margo looked at Quentin, who had clearly been shocked at Eliot's entrance, but was shaking off his surprise. He stood up, dislodging Fen's hand from his hair. "El," he said, grim faced and so adorably brave. "Ignore them, they're just trying to be good friends, or whatever."

"I didn't mean to interrupt," Eliot said, scrunching his eyebrows and turning more fully towards Quentin. Margo studied his face. Quentin was right - the look of soul-deep devotion that Eliot usually had on his face when he looked at Quentin was entirely absent.

The truth was, Margo was angry at Eliot for whatever bullshit was going on now, but she was also _worried_. Maybe Eliot was getting cold feet and running scared, in which case, she felt her anger was more than justified. But also, maybe - maybe Quentin was right, and he was bewitched or something.

"Okay," Margo said, nodding her head sharply in decision. "Okay, let's go spend some quality time." She left her partners to comfort Quentin, and went to deal with her idiot best friend. If anyone could get answers out of Eliot, it would be her.

They spent the whole afternoon and evening together, and Eliot bemoaned the sad fate of his broken relationship over a couple of shared bottles of wine (Earth variety, because Fillorian booze still _sucked_). Margo was trying to be a good friend to both Quentin and Eliot, but she had to admit a small amount of relief filled her when she ascertained, through minute observations, that Eliot seemed to be completely unchanged towards _her_. He was as affectionate and loving as ever, draping himself dramatically over Margo on the couch, filling her wineglass for her with tender smiles and solicitous devotion. When Q had first come to her and said that Eliot had been acting strangely all week, she'd felt a pang of insecurity and doubt, because she seriously hadn't noticed. But whatever was going on, whatever weird curse or spell was affecting Eliot's emotions, it seemed to be limited to his interactions with Quentin alone.

Which, of course, made Margo feel like shit for an entirely different reason. Talking to Eliot about the subject was like talking to a very convincing alien look-alike, because there was no way that _Eliot _would say something like -

"Q's a sweet kid, but I think we were both kidding ourselves with the whole _monogamy_ thing, you know?"

or

"I think I projected all of this trauma onto him because he was _there_, but now that we're well and truly on the other side of it, I've realized that he's not right for me. And I'm _definitely_ not right for him."

or

"Do you think he'll actually stay here in Fillory? I'm not a total dick, I don't want to kick him out of his home, but I also don't want to flaunt it in his face when I start - "

And Margo had been forced to interrupt that one - "_Don't_ sleep with anyone, Eliot."

Eliot had gaped at her, fish-mouthed, and then finished his glass of wine off in a large gulp. He set the glass down, none too delicately, and fixed her with a glare. "Excuse me?"

Margo took a deep breath, pursed her lips, and tried for a level-headed tone. "Don't fuck anyone just yet. You haven't already, have you?"

"It's been like six hours," Eliot said.

"That's not an answer."

Eliot rolled his eyes. "Like I said, I'm not _that_ much of a dick, and I'm not _that_ unfeeling. This sucks for me, too, you know. I just meant - like - _soon_, the whole rebound thing is going to get started. I'd expect it's the same for Quentin, so - "

"_You'd expect_ _it's _\- " Margo started, exasperated beyond tolerance. "Ugh, this is crazy, Eliot. What the hell happened to you? Promise me right now that you'll wait to fuck anyone else. Okay? Because when we figure this thing out and get you back to normal, you're going to regret it if you've whored around with the entire Fillorian royal guard in the meantime."

"Oh, God, not you too," Eliot groaned, reaching for the bottle of wine to refill his glass. "That's what Quentin said, too, that I'm going to be all fucked up once I realize my terrible mistake. When the fuck did he get so _confident_, is what I want to know."

"He's confident because of _you_. Because you guys are fuckin' rock-solid. Jesus, El, you're in love with Quentin. You know you are. Please just tell me what's going on."

Eliot's expression went sad, and a little uncertain. "I don't know, Margo. But - I'm _not_. I'm not in love with him. I was so sure that he was it for me, but now, it's like... I don't know. I don't feel like I used to."

Margo closed her eyes tight, then leveled Eliot with a stare. "I think you're cursed or mind controlled or something."

Eliot blinked at her. "That's crazy. _Why_ would you think that? I mean, Occam's Razor - "

"No. You love Quentin. It's like - a fucking fact of the universe, El. Please try and think back. Try and remember. Isn't it possible that something - something _happened_? When did your feelings start to change?"

This was just bizarre. Margo was _not_ built for being an armature therapist. Especially not for Quentin and Eliot, who had a connection completely bewildering to anybody on the outside of it. They loved each other so much that sometimes it hurt Margo just looking at them. She was happy with Fen and Josh, she really was - but she honestly didn't know what she'd do with the kind of intensity she sensed between Q and El. She studied her best friend's face intently, and caught a strange quirk of Eliot's lips, a flash of something evasive and strained in his eyes.

"What?" she said, chasing the strange expression. "What did you just think of?"

But the expression was gone, and Eliot's face had smoothed over once again. He looked exasperated and kind of miserable all at the same time. "I don't know, Margo. I can't explain myself to you. Or to Quentin. I just - I can't just pretend everything's normal. I don't know what I want, I just - I know what I _don't_ want. I know this whole thing makes me look like a dick. But I can't - _lie_ to him, or to myself. He wouldn't want me to."

"But Eliot - "

"When Quentin's had some time to accept this, he'll realize it's for the best," Eliot said.

He was like a robot. Or, not exactly. But not like Eliot, because Eliot would never say that. Margo shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs. Today was fucking weird and mostly kind of awful.

"Okay, I'll drop it for now," Margo said. "All I ask is that you think on it, El. Think about it - if there's even a chance that you're not fully yourself right now, don't you want to know about it? Don't you want to make an informed decision about your future?"

Eliot was giving her that strange look again, like there was something he didn't know how to say to her, building up in his throat. But then he coughed and blinked, the expression wiping away. "I love you, Bambi. And I know you're trying to do what's best for me. And for Quentin. I just... I don't think there's anything to think about."

He poured Margo another drink, and Margo sipped at it, letting Eliot change the subject gracefully to other topics. It wasn't in Margo to back down from a fight, but she clearly needed time to think of a new strategy.

* * *

**ELIOT**

He waited three days before asking Quentin for his ring back. Obviously he felt like shit about that, but it was a family heirloom, after all, and honestly he didn't think Quentin would want to keep the reminder of their failed relationship anyway.

He found him out in the gardens, wandering the paths in a desultory sort of way. Eliot did feel a little pang of guilt when he saw Quentin. It was clear the other man hadn't been getting much sleep. And after everything they'd been through, and all he knew about Quentin's fight with mental illness, it was painful to see him in such a state. There was also the squirm of unease, the feeling that if he could just shift his perspective slightly, things would slot back into place and he'd know what to do, how to act around this man who had once been the keeper of his heart. Quentin didn't want his pity. Quentin wanted his _love_, and Eliot didn't know how to give that to him anymore. It was depressing.

"Hey," he said softly. He was trying not to startle Quentin, who hadn't noticed him yet, but he failed - Quentin gave a little jump, and then met his eyes.

"Hey."

"Uh. How are you?" Eliot said. It felt lame the second he'd said it, and Quentin actually rolled his eyes, which was... deserved, honestly.

"I'm just _peachy_," he said, putting weighty emphasis on the word. "Any change?" he asked, his eyes darting over Eliot's face like he was searching for information. "Do you still - you're still done with me?"

Eliot grimaced. He could see, in Quentin's posture, how tightly he was holding himself together. The forced business-like tone of his voice did something complicated to Eliot's emotions, though. The guilt was still there, but there was also the undercurrent of newly familiar anger and impatience. Why was it so hard for Quentin to just accept that he knew his own mind? What right did he have to question him like this? It was just making it harder on both of them.

But that squirm of unease was still there in the pit of his stomach. The echo of emotion, and the blissful relief of that emotion vanishing in an instant, cool and clear like liquid poured down a parched throat. His mind glanced over it, though. The thought was too complex and prickly to address head-on. So he took a deep breath and met Quentin's gaze. Whatever else was going on, Quentin Coldwater certainly deserved his respect and consideration.

"Quentin, I - I need to ask you something, and it's going to suck. I'm sorry."

That wasn't the most eloquent that Eliot had ever sounded, but it was the best he could do in the moment.

Quentin was looking at him, unimpressed and also wary, like he was worried Eliot was about to attack him. It made something in Eliot's chest hurt, but he ignored it. "I was wondering if I could have my ring back."

Quentin's face twitched, and he blinked rapidly a few times before turning away so Eliot couldn't see his expression. Eliot heard him take in a few deep, steadying breaths and then, still without looking at him, twist the ring off of his finger.

Eliot coughed, feeling awkward, as Quentin reached out a hand and dropped the ring into his waiting palm. For a long moment they stood there in silence. Eliot felt - responsible, he supposed, for the grief he knew he was causing. There wasn't a lot he could do to change it, but it was there, that inclination to make sure that Quentin was alright. Or as alright as he could be.

Quentin's expression wasn't heartbroken, exactly - it was stony, but there was a tightening at the corners of his mouth that told Eliot he was holding onto his control by the thinnest margins. "Fen got to keep the ring," he finally said. His tone was impossible to interpret.

"Fen was my wife," Eliot said. "You and I were never married."

Quentin flinched and moved the tiniest bit away from Eliot, and Eliot realized his mistake a second too late. "I mean - of course we were married. Before, in Fillory."

Quentin let out a huff of something, not quite laughter. "It's fine. It doesn't matter, El."

But it did matter, and Eliot's stomach twisted itself into knots. The mosaic timeline had been such a point of conflict between them before, and Eliot had been so careful to never diminish its importance. Not after the cruelty he'd shown to Quentin when he'd first asked him to give their relationship a chance. "It does matter," he said, echoing his own thoughts. "I wasn't thinking, Quentin. I'm sorry."

There was another long silence. How long was he supposed to stand here, watching Quentin react, before it was okay for him to leave? Obscurely, Eliot recognized how selfish he was being. But he also knew Quentin. He knew him incredibly well. The man in front of him wouldn't want Eliot to bullshit him on his feelings. No breakup between the two of them was ever going to be painless, but at least he could try his best to make it clear and clean.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "Listen, I've got a meeting to get to, so..."

Quentin was doing that thing again. That thing he'd been doing since Eliot had first made the decision to break things off. He looked hurt, his eyes wounded and slightly bloodshot, but he also looked confused, and a little frightened, as he stared Eliot down. Searching for something. Looking for answers. It made Eliot's skin crawl. Between Quentin's searching gaze, and Margo's ongoing insistence that he'd been magically lobotomized somehow, it was starting to get harder to keep his footing. What right did they have to question his judgment like this? His guilt and discomfort were just starting to turn the corner into true anger when Quentin suddenly nodded, his eyes snapping shut and his jaw clenching.

"Yeah, fine. Just - go to your meeting. I'm good."

Eliot had never believed anything less in his life, but he was too grateful for the chance to escape to question it further.

* * *

**QUENTIN **

Quentin tried not to think about giving the ring back to Eliot, and what it meant. It was stupid. It didn't mean anything, just like the breakup itself didn't mean anything. It wasn't real, when Eliot looked at him like a distant acquaintance, with a hint of impatience mixed with pity whenever they were in the same room together. It was fucking awful, but it also _wasn't real_, and Q tried very hard to focus on that. He'd been spending a lot of time in the library, looking for a hint as to what sort of spell Eliot might be under. Thus far, he'd found nothing.

He found love spells, but nothing that looked like an _anti-_love spell. He'd even found a spell that turned off a person's emotions, which he'd privately knick-named the "Kolinahr" spell (a reference that even normal smitten Eliot would have rolled his eyes at), but that didn't fit the circumstances either. Eliot wasn't an emotionless robot. He was just _Eliot_, without love in his heart for Quentin.

So Quentin did his research, and in the meantime, he was just... living in a goddamn Fillorian castle with his ex. It was so strange to think of Eliot that way. Even after the mosaic, when Eliot had rejected him, it hadn't been like this. Because Q had known that underneath everything else, beyond the key quest and their complicated emotions, Eliot loved him. Maybe it wasn't the kind of love that Q wanted it to be, maybe they weren't going to be together, but Eliot _loved_ him. To lose the feeling of that love now was like nothing else he'd ever felt. It was the absence of something he'd almost taken for granted. Or - well, maybe not that. But it had been a constant in his life, practically since he'd met Eliot. The flavor and depth of that love had adapted and grown over time, but it had always been there, from a flirtatious yet deeply important friendship, through the painful mistake of their first time together, through a lifetime of love and partnership, through rejection, and possession, and near death (for both of them, more than once). And now, it was gone.

It had been six days since the break-up, and Q had spent yet another nearly sleepless night in the library, accompanied variously by Fen, Josh, Margo and a few Fillorian scholars who had volunteered to assist. His eyes were aching, but he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. He'd quietly vacated his and Eliot's rooms and was staying in guest chambers, but it wasn't comfortable at all without the familiar warmth of his fiance beside him. Instead, he decided to head to the grand hall, where breakfast would be freshly served. Maybe he'd feel less miserable and hollow with a full stomach.

The miserable and hollow feeling grew tenfold when he rounded the corner and bumped straight in to Eliot.

"Shit, sorry," Eliot said, offering him a casual grin as he placed his hands on Q's shoulders to steady him. He released him quickly, none of the lingering touches that Q had come to expect since - well, since literally the day he and Eliot had met each other.

Quentin was so tired. He was tired, and his heart hurt, and Eliot was already walking away from him, like Quentin was a stranger on a busy street, and not the love of his goddamn life, and - and he was _angry_, and so fucking exhausted - and -

"You're sorry?" Quentin said. His voice sounded cold even to his own ears. Eliot stopped, turning around to face him. "You're fucking sorry?"

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Eliot said. It wasn't intended to be cruel - even through Q's rising ire, he could tell that Eliot was attempting to diffuse the situation. But Q was tired of being diffused.

"Why can't you accept that something's wrong with you? Why can't you just admit that this whole thing is crazy? You _proposed_ to me less than a month ago, El!"

"Yeah, and then I changed my mind," Eliot said, like this was a totally normal thing to have happened.

"Do you not hear how insane that sounds?" Quentin said. The sound of his own voice was nearly unfamiliar to him. He could hear the hysterical desperation creeping in, and he tried to temper it, taking a deep, gulping breath and forcing himself to meet Eliot's eyes.

"I'm sorry, but I can't change how I feel. I can't just flip a switch, Quentin."

Quentin took one more fortifying breath, and then spoke again, modulating his voice. They were in the hallway alone, but anyone could walk by at any time. This wasn't exactly a discussion he wanted to be having in public. But not talking about it wasn't an option either. How was he supposed to let Eliot steamroll him like this? Again, and again? Once he figured out what was going on, he had to believe that Eliot would be grateful for his persistence.

"You feel nothing for me at all," Quentin said. "Doesn't that seem weird to you? You remember loving me, right? Can you remember how that felt?"

Eliot's eyebrows scrunched together for a moment, like he was trying to remember. "Sure. But people change, Quentin, people's emotions shift, and - "

"You keep calling me _Quentin_," Q cut in.

"It's your name."

"You haven't called me Q _once_ since you - since you ended it." And honestly, fuck his stupid fucking voice for cracking over the words. He took yet another deep breath, fighting for calm. "It's not that you don't want to be in a relationship with me anymore. It's not that you're no longer in love with me. You're completely _indifferent_ to me. I'm - I'm scenery to you, a casual acquaintance at best, a nuisance at worst."

"I'm not sure what you want me to say," Eliot said slowly. "I - I regret that I'm hurting you, I really do."

"You're going to feel a fuck-ton of regret when we fix this, Eliot. You're going to lose it when you realize - when you _feel_ \- "

"Are you threatening me now?" Eliot said. He raised an imperial eyebrow, looking a little amused. 

Quentin rolled his eyes, because that was better than screaming. "I'm trying to - I'm trying to tell you _now_ that it's okay, alright? I don't know how much of this you'll remember, or how you'll feel about it when we've reversed the effects of this curse, or whatever it is, but I want you to know that right now, all I care about is helping you, okay?"

Eliot rubbed a tired hand across his face. "I'm under a curse, right? Or being magically influenced in some way. That's what you think?"

"It's what I know."

"And what are my symptoms, Quentin? Huh? What exactly is so _wrong_ with me that you're this certain about it? Have I been acting different in _any way_ other than towards you?"

Quentin bit down on his lip, hard. "No. But that's because - "

"It's because there's _nothing wrong with me_. I'm not cursed, I haven't lost my memories, I'm not possessed. I'm Eliot Waugh. I live in Fillory. I love my life, Quentin, and I know what that life is. I feel just as strongly about Margo and Fen and everyone else in my life that I care about. I just don't love you anymore. Are you really so selfish - are you really that full of yourself that you can't entertain the possibility that maybe I'm just done with you?"

Quentin's ears were ringing. He knew this was bullshit. He knew Eliot better than he knew himself. Even if Eliot ever did stop wanting to be with him - which, _God_, he didn't even like to think about it - it would never happen like this. Quentin's insecurities could easily entertain the possibility of Eliot leaving him. It was hard to avoid confronting those insecurities in this exact moment, for obvious reasons, but it was more complicated than that.

Eliot could get sick of him as a partner, but Eliot would never be this cruel.

Eliot could leave him - but Eliot could never stop loving him.

Almost like Eliot was reading Quentin's mind, he rubbed his hand over his face again, blinking a few times and then looking at Quentin with a soft sort of regret in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm - I'm frustrated, but that was a little harsh."

"Um," Quentin said, biting down on his lip again.

"I - Quentin, I don't know why," Eliot said. "I don't pretend to understand why this happened. I remember that I was happy with you, okay? But I don't feel that way anymore. I'm asking you to please respect that I know my own mind."

Quentin's stomach twisted. He couldn't. He couldn't respect that. But he nodded once, a tight, jerky motion, and blinked against a wetness in his eyes. "I love you, Eliot," he said, because he wanted to hear the sentiment returned more badly than he'd ever wanted anything. Maybe it was masochistic, but there it was. That fact would never stop being true, no matter what happened from here.

Eliot's face softened even further, but not with affection. The look of pity was almost worse than indifference. "I know, Quentin. God knows why, but I know you do. But I also know that you're strong, and you'll find someone who deserves you a lot more than I ever could."

"That's a line. A cliche one, at that," Quentin said, stubborn and shaky.

Eliot sighed, the irritation back in the blink of an eye. "That doesn't mean I don't mean it. I'm sorry. I don't honestly know what more you want me to say."

And Q didn't either. He'd hit a wall, and it was time to try something new - a visit to Earth was probably overdue at this point. He would tell his friends there what was going on, and hope they had theories that he hadn't thought of yet. And he'd give Eliot the space he so clearly wanted right now, whatever the reason. "Fine," he said, short and sharp. "Just - do me a favor, and stick close to Margo for time being, alright? You don't think anyone did anything to you, I get it - but if you could humor me for - " Quentin gritted his teeth, making himself meet Eliot's eyes. "for _old time's sake_, I'd greatly appreciate it."

He didn't wait for an answer, turning around and walking back the way he'd come. He wasn't feeling very hungry anymore.


	2. Chapter Two

**MARGO**

When Quentin wasn't around, when it was just Margo and Eliot, it was almost possible to pretend that things were normal. They'd spent the morning eating a decadent breakfast together, gossiping about the drama between some of the maids in the palace, rolling their eyes at the latest requests from their tenuous allies. In the back of her mind, of course, the Quentin situation was always there. Every attempt she made to get Eliot to talk about it was met with more of the same - careless assurances that he was perfectly fine, that he'd be a lot _more_ fine if Margo would stop shadowing him and give him enough privacy to get laid.

It sounded like the Eliot she had met in her first year at Brakebills. The Eliot she'd loved so dearly. It also made her want to wring his neck.

So, as guilty as it made her, sometimes she let herself have a morning with Eliot where she didn't bring Quentin up at all. The illusion of normalcy allowed her to put a lid on her temper and remember that there were still so many things to love about her troublesome best friend.

Just as they were finishing their leisurely breakfast, Quentin entered the room. Margo smiled in greeting, watching Quentin's expression shutter closed when he saw that Eliot was there as well.

"Hey, sweetie," Margo said, exaggeratedly affectionate. Eliot pursed his lips but Margo glared to stop him from saying anything. "I have a few meetings this morning but I'll join you this afternoon. Josh said he could hang with you in the library in the meantime."

Eliot huffed out a breath, as he always did when anyone alluded to the research they were all doing. He was stubborn on that - insistent that nothing was wrong with him, no matter what they all believed.

"Oh," Q said, darting his eyes away from Eliot and looking at Margo instead. "Thanks, but actually I was thinking I'd try something different."

"Planning on seducing me the old fashioned way?" Eliot said. Margo smacked him, hard. Eliot's words had been snarky, half-way between a joke and genuine frustration. She caught Q's expression at the verbal jab. Just for a moment, his face tightened, on the verge of shattering, but he blinked and managed to re-establish a blank sort of professionalism.

"I'm going to Earth, actually," he said, answering Eliot's question but keeping his eyes on Margo.

"Oh, good idea!" Margo said. She could hear in her own voice that she was trying too hard to sound normal, but Quentin just gave her a grateful look.

"I figure we might as well see if Jules has any ideas, since we've hit a wall here."

Eliot scoffed. "Maybe you've hit a wall because nothing's wrong with me."

"Hush, darling," Margo said, swatting him on the arm. "You're grumpy when you haven't finished your breakfast."

"I'm grumpy when I haven't had _sex_ in - "

"Shut _up_."

Margo snapped her eyes around to focus on Q, who blinked a few times at his own outburst and then shook his head. He wrapped his arms around himself like he was trying to disappear. "Sorry."

Eliot sighed again, but the frustration was tempered now. "Me too."

Margo studied Eliot, curious. He _did_ seem a bit contrite, but there was still nothing in his posture, in his face, that indicated a deeply repressed longing for the man standing a few feet away from him. He felt bad, evidently, for snapping at Quentin. But he wasn't in love anymore. It was telegraphed all over his face. It was painful for Margo to look at him like that, with such a large part of who he was suddenly missing. Eliot was unchanged towards her personally, but it was only now that Eliot had ended things with Quentin that she realized how much of an influence Q had been on him - and the other way around. The mean-spirited, regal, glamorous figure sitting in front of her, his head thrown back and his feet up on an empty chair, was not exactly Eliot Waugh before meeting Quentin Coldwater, but he was close. And the Q standing in front of the table, with his rumpled clothing and hunched shoulders, his mouth turned down in shy misery, was uncomfortably similar to the Quentin Coldwater of early Brakebills, the one Margo had been eager to help emerge from his shell.

"Good luck," she said to Quentin, giving him a hard stare. "I'll keep working on things here, Q." She ignored Eliot's huff of protest. "I won't stop until we get things back the way they're meant to be. I promise."

* * *

**JULIA**

"He didn't say what was wrong?" Alice asked, her eyes serious and worried. Q's rabbit had been unhelpfully vague - _need help, coming now_ \- but that could be just a consequence of the four word limit. The second bunny had rectified the obvious inadequacy of the first - _this is Quentin, sorry - _and Julia was trying not to worry too much. If it were something life-threatening, surely more messenger bunnies would have followed.

"Just the one message," Julia said, shaking her head. Despite her anxiety, she couldn't help but smile as she watched her girlfriend darting around the living room, plumping perfectly plump throw pillows and lining them up neatly on the couch. Alice tended to tidy up when she was nervous. "Think it'll just be Q, or will we be getting the whole gang?"

By 'whole gang,' Julia meant Eliot, which Alice knew very well. Throwing down one final pillow, Alice turned to face her, raising an eyebrow. "If Q's in any sort of trouble, I doubt Eliot will leave his side."

Julia nodded, smiling. Maybe there would always be just the smallest tinge of weirdness when the four of them were hanging out together, but things were honestly better than she would have expected. Eliot and Quentin had just spent several weeks on Earth, living in the apartment with them. They'd gone on actual honest-to-God double dates, and nobody had yelled at anybody or anything. Eliot and Julia had even been able to sit back and laugh at Alice and Quentin as they nerded out over some rare book Alice had found in the library. (Julia had, of course, been equally excited to find out about the book when Alice had first told her, but Eliot didn't need to know that). A part of Julia felt wistful for Q and Eliot, and regretted that they lived in Fillory. It was almost like she was getting a glimpse of what it would have been like to be a student at Brakebills with the rest of them.

"I'm glad they're talking to a therapist," Julia said, flopping down on the couch and disrupting one of Alice's pillows. Alice didn't even bother rolling her eyes, just sat down next to Julia and leaned against her, head on her shoulder.

"Q and I could have used some couple's counseling. Literally from the very beginning," she said. There was no regret in her tone, just contemplation of other paths her life might have taken. Alice and Julia had an open-mind policy. They didn't hide things from each other, not even the messy stuff.

Before Julia could think of how to respond, she heard a clatter from the kitchen, and Quentin fell, somewhat awkwardly, out of the pantry. They were still working on the most efficient and permanent way of setting up a link from Fillory to Earth, and the results had proven a little messy.

"Ow, fuck."

"You okay, Q?" Julia asked, getting up from the couch. She studied him as he got to his feet. He wasn't covered in blood, he wasn't crying... so far so good.

But as Quentin straightened up to face him, Julia heard Alice give a little gasp from just behind her, and she knew why.

Quentin looked terrible. He had dark circles under his eyes and uneven stubble and his clothing was rumpled. It made Julia's heart ache in the worst way, as it was an uncomfortably familiar sight. She hadn't seen Q in such a state in a long time - was beginning to think she'd never see him so low again.

"What happened?" Julia asked, rushing forward to throw her arms around Quentin. Alice wasn't far behind. Q let the two women embrace him for a moment, letting out a long breath of air.

"It's - um - it's a bit of a strange story. The - the first thing is, um. Eliot and I broke up."

Julia felt her insides freeze, and heard, in an echoing part of her brain, Alice let out a laugh - an awkward, instinctual reaction to hearing something so absurd.

"Excuse me?" Julia said, as Alice clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her inappropriate response. Luckily for both of them, Q did seem mildly amused. His eyes were still tired, but his mouth quirked up just slightly.

"He broke up with me."

"What's wrong with him?" Alice asked, and Julia snapped her head over to look at her. She wasn't saying it in an accusatory way, but in the exact way that Julia was thinking it. The possibilities were spiraling through her brain at lightning speed - maybe Eliot was dying? Trying to spare Q the pain of watching a slow descent into illness? Or maybe someone was manipulating his mind or his memory, or, or maybe someone was trying to interfere in Fillorian politics somehow, by sowing discord? Maybe it wasn't Eliot, maybe it was an impostor?

Quentin's eyes took on a grateful expression at Alice's immediate understanding of the situation, and he placed a hand on her shoulder. "I'll tell you everything. Let's - can we sit?"

They did, gathering close on either side of Quentin on the couch. His story was a little jumbled, adorably Quentin-like in the way he kept jumping around from point to point, but the gist of it was clear. Eliot had broken up with Quentin. Which meant, obviously, something seriously weird and scary was going on.

"It kind of sounds like the emotion potions," Alice said, brow furrowed.

Quentin shook his head. "I thought of that, but it doesn't quite fit. He's acting all cold and fucking - _infuriating_ \- to me, but he's acting normal to everyone else."

Julia's heart was just aching for Q. He'd been very matter-of-fact about the whole thing, but she could see how badly he was hurting. Just the way he was holding himself, his arms wrapped around his stomach like he was trying to curl up and disappear, reminded her of pre-Brakebills Quentin in a way that she _hated_ to see. He'd come so far, and notwithstanding the fact that clearly something scary was going on with Eliot, she seriously wanted to find the man and pummel him for putting Q through this.

"Maybe it's something similar, though," Julia said, trying to keep her tone scholarly. "We could start there, see if variations on the potion exist."

It spoke to the strength of Alice and Quentin's worry that a discussion of emotion potions didn't trigger any awkwardness. Julia hadn't been around for any of that, but she'd heard the stories from both sides.

"Or it's just a good old fashioned curse. Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt you?" Alice asked. "Or hurt Eliot?"

"Eliot's not hurting," Quentin said, a little sharp. Julia put a hand on his arm and squeezed. Quentin blinked and let out a slow, hard breath. "Sorry. I haven't been getting a lot of sleep. I - I'm so scared for him, obviously, but it's hard to be - I mean, he's not making it easy to be sympathetic right now."

"Yeah, I understand," Julia said, and then bit her lip when Quentin gave her an incredulous look. "Well, of course I don't _understand_, but I - I feel for you, Q. You know I do. And we're going to help."

Alice nodded, grave. "I assume you've already exhausted the library in Whitespire."

Quentin nodded back and shrugged at the same time, his mouth turned down again in a miserable little frown. "I kept telling myself this would be a quick fix. I'd find something in a book somewhere, and it would explain everything. But it's been a week, so..."

"So you admitted defeat and came to the experts," Julia said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. "I'll call Kady, ask her to spread the words with the Hedges." She stood up from the couch, and Alice did as well.

"And I'll head to the Library. I can already think of a couple of books that might be a good starting place."

Q sat on the couch, looking up at the two women. He still looked so small and uncertain, and Julia's chest tightened. Without pausing to think about it, she leaned down and pressed a kiss to Quentin's forehead. "We've got you, Q. We'll figure this out."

Quentin tried for another smile, but it still didn't quite reach his eyes. With a last squeeze of Q's shoulder, Julia darted off to her bedroom to fetch her phone and place a call to Kady.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

And so life moved on. Well, _Q_ didn't move on, but the world kept going. For the next two weeks, Q bounced back and forth between Fillory and Earth, getting updates from Margo, Fen, and Josh about Eliot's behavior, and joining Julia and Alice in their fervent research attempts.

As awful as his life was right now, he had to admit that the support of his friends was warming. Alice and Julia had been extremely devoted to finding out what had happened to Eliot. Even Kady, who always seemed to be busy with Hedge business, had popped by a few times to chat with Q, and she had readily offered to scrounge up some potential leads among her contacts. She hadn't even rolled her eyes at Q for being a sad-sack.

And in Fillory, Quentin was relieved to know that Margo and the others had been keeping Eliot on a short leash. He knew Eliot, knew that with the absence of a solid, stable relationship, he'd fall back in to some of his old habits. Honestly, watching Margo cock-blocking Eliot in order to save him future heartache might have been funny, if Q had been in any mood to be amused.

Q was vaguely proud of himself for not sinking too deep into depression. He was taking his meds, attending his regular therapy sessions (although he'd cancelled the ones he was supposed to be doing with Eliot), and was trying his best to keep himself in decent shape. He'd gone a few nights without sleep, missed a few days of shaving here and there, but for the most part, he'd staved off the worst of it.

He even went out and did something frivolous and maybe sort of sad - he bought Eliot a ring. He'd been meaning to do it for a while, ever since Eliot proposed, but he hadn't felt the need to rush it for any particular reason. But now, he had the absurd idea that he had to be ready, that whenever they fixed the situation with Eliot, he should have the ring on hand. Of course, he had to face the reality that he'd just dropped a not insignificant sum on a ring for a guy who had just dumped him, and had told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn't going to change his mind. Circumstances notwithstanding, that _was_ maybe just the tiniest bit pathetic. Magic was weird and wonderful, but sometimes it was the fucking worst.

Q sat around with his friends, Fillorian and Earth alike, night after night and went over theories. They held the facts up against any spell or curse that seemed even vaguely related, but nothing clicked. Margo and Fen were tasked with asking Eliot surreptitious questions about when and how his feelings had altered, hoping to get more hints to go off of, but he knew what they were up to. All he would tell them was the same thing he'd already said. He couldn't explain it, he just knew how he felt. There was a certainty, a consistency, in the way he spoke about it that made Quentin especially miserable. Eliot was chafing under the restraints that his friends' vigilance had imposed upon him, and Quentin could see it. He wanted to go out and get drunk and fuck a stranger, and Quentin was starting to get seriously worried that they wouldn't be able to stop him for much longer.

Quentin would forgive Eliot any trespass. When things went back to normal, he'd tell Eliot, in all honesty, that it didn't matter what he'd got up to in the time they'd been apart. But he knew Eliot - and if Eliot had sex with someone else, without Q's consent (and, let's face it, participation), he'd never forgive himself. It really was for Eliot's own good that Margo was tailing him constantly, and keeping Fen or Josh near him when she couldn't be.

After sleepless nights of research that made Quentin feel like he was back at Brakebills, after waking up blearily on the couch in the New York apartment, and a cot in the library in Fillory, disoriented always, and achingly lonely, after crying on Julia's shoulder, and Margo's, and Fen's, and even Josh's and Alice's, the breakthrough came. At long last.

It was the end of the third week since Eliot had broken up with him. He was on Earth, in the apartment, going over some of Alice's notes, when Julia burst into the room. He hardly had time to notice Kady rushing in right behind her, before Julia was bouncing in front of him, a wide grin on her face. She was bright with triumph, her voice nearly sing-song as she made her announcement -

"It's a potion! A Fillorian one, Q - read this!" She shoved a piece of paper in Quentin's hands, dancing in place.

Q scanned the page, hardly taking in the words. Only the important bits seemed to jump out at him - _a temporary loss of intense emotions - the potion counteracts whatever emotion the drinker feels most extremely at the time of consumption - effects wear off in six hours at most - _

He blinked. "But - this says a few hours - " he started, but was interrupted, this time by Kady.

"Right, but that's for Fillorians. Eliot's from _Earth_."

"But - " Q said. "But - how - how did you even find out about this? And if Eliot had taken a potion, he would have mentioned something by now. Margo and I have been pestering him nonstop to find out what changed - "

"There are some Hedges who deal almost exclusively in Fillorian lore and contraband," Kady said. "Fillory has some fucking awesome drugs, stuff us sad Earth suckers could only dream of, and people will pay big for some of this shit. I guess this potion is a fairly common mood stabilizer over there, but the Hedges who have tried it here have experienced weird side-effects, not the least of which being a permanent alteration to their emotional state."

Alice, still standing next to Quentin, squeezed his shoulder hard, and said the word that Q was utterly unable to utter. "Permanent?"

But Julia was grinning and shaking her head quickly. "It's easy to counteract, actually. A simple spell the Hedges worked out to reverse the potion's effects. The target doesn't even need to be _willing_. Q, you could sneak up on Eliot and just - fix him."

"I - " Quentin blinked a few times, trying to wrap his brain around what this meant. "This doesn't - I mean, are you _sure_?"

"No," Kady said, refreshingly blunt. "But everything you've told us - it fits."

"Why wouldn't he have said something, though?" Alice asked, frowning. Again, it was like she was speaking for Quentin.

Kady bit her lip. "I'm less certain about that part of it."

"A lot of reports of people using the potion say that once the person has lost the capacity to feel a certain emotion, they don't miss it," Julia said. "So, say you're enraged at someone, and you drink it and you don't feel that anger anymore - you remember that you used to feel differently, but you don't miss the feeling. It's like it never existed. There's no reason you would want to go back to it."

Quentin took a step closer so he was practically head to head with the three women, all of them looking down at the paper. "That... God, that sounds right. Eliot says he remembers loving me but he just doesn't feel it anymore."

"So, he didn't say anything about the potion, because he doesn't want to be fixed?" Alice said, eyebrows scrunched together.

"It's also possible he was drugged," Kady pointed out. "Maybe someone slipped it into his food or something."

"The good news is, like I said - he doesn't need to consent to the spell for it to work. Q, you can just go up to him and start casting, and then everything will be back to normal."

"Jules," Alice said, frowning at her. "Q's not going to perform magic on someone without their permission."

Julia blinked at that, some of the excitement draining from her eyes. Quentin knew how she felt. Alice was right, of course - he couldn't force Eliot to accept this. He wasn't about to sneak up on him and cast magic without his knowledge, no matter how sure he was that Eliot would thank him for it later.

"You're right," Quentin said to Alice. "But I think Julia's point still stands. Eliot doesn't need to _want_ the emotion back. He just needs to be willing to let me try. Trust me, the way he's been acting..." he shuddered, pushing aside thoughts of Eliot's blank, disinterested eyes, "he's not going to believe the spell will do anything to him at all. Maybe he'll let me do it, so I can get it out of my system. I'm starting to seriously piss him off, insisting he's under the influence of something."

"Right, well..." Julia was looking at him, equal parts determined and thoughtful. "Maybe he'll cooperate, to get you off his back. But if you can't get him to sit still long enough for the spell in any other way, you should probably have backup." She walked briskly to the kitchen counter-top and pulled a pad of paper towards her. For a few moments, Quentin watched her scribble out some notes, and then he turned back to the others.

"Kady... thank you."

Kady shrugged, looking awkward like she always did when people were sincere around her. "Well. Don't tell that asshole I said so, but you and Eliot belong together. I'm just righting a wrong."

Quentin decided to risk hugging her, and even received a quick pat on the back in reciprocation.

Alice took Kady's place in his arms right away when Kady pulled back, giving him a tight squeeze. "This is going to work, Q. And if it doesn't, we'll keep looking until something does. Kady's right, you know. You and Eliot... you're magic together."

Quentin smiled at her. It was the first time he'd smiled a genuine and pleased smile in weeks, and he could feel his mouth stretch strangely into the unfamiliar shape.

"I don't know what I did to deserve you." He said it directly to Alice, but he meant all of it - all of them. When he was young and in the worst years of his depression, he never could have imagined having so many people in his life like this, who loved him, and who he loved in return, with such devotion.

"Okay," Julia announced, coming over with the notepad and presenting it to Quentin with a flourish. "This is sort of a force-field spell. It's simple, but deceptively strong. If Eliot's being a dick about this, you can trap him in a cube of energy and have your way with him."

Quentin stared at her. So did Kady and Alice.

"Well, in a manner of speaking," Julia finished, defensive. "As a backup."

Quentin took the notebook, sighing as he looked down at the circumstances. In his other hand he held the details of the potion, and the simple spell that would cancel its effects.

"I suppose there's nothing to lose." He looked between the three women, smiled grimly at their serious and compassionate expressions, and nodded his head, decisive. "Back to Fillory I go."

* * *

**MARGO**

It was a couple of hours after lunch, and Margo was about to track down Josh and see if he was in the mood for some afternoon delight. Fen, she knew, was spending time with some cousins who were visiting from a nearby village. It was always a bit jarring to remember that Fen wasn't born royalty. Sure, she was friendly and a bit more down-to-earth than you might expect of a Queen, but she carried the regal energy of Fillorian nobility so well. Josh, on the other hand, was about as un-royal as a person could get, and that was honestly part of the appeal. Also, he should just be getting out of a councilor's meeting, and would probably be all too eager for some fun...

Her plans for some nerdy white boy action were interrupted when an entirely different nerdy white boy barged into her chambers, wild-eyed and grinning. "Margo," Quentin said, breathing hard. "Margo, I've got it."

"Shit. Really? Are you sure?" Margo asked, jumping to her feet and scurrying over to Q, libido temporarily forgotten. He was holding a single piece of paper tight in his hands, and he showed it to her, his breathing still coming out in little huffs. Margo skimmed it. The top half of the page was a description of a potion, and a detail of the strange side-effects that had been known to happen on Earth-born imbibers. The second half of the page were the circumstances for a very simple spell. It wasn't even cooperative, just a quick little thing, the matter of a couple of minutes.

Quentin spoke, his voice low and fervent. "There's no way to be absolutely sure, but this fits. Everything about it _fits_. All we have to do is perform the spell and Eliot should be back to normal."

Margo felt a huge smile covering her own face, and she giggled, jumping up to throw her arms around Quentin. "Holy shit! Holy shit, Q, this is amazing! I think he's in the counsel chambers right now, with Josh - let's go."

Something in Quentin's expression altered slightly. He followed Margo into the hall and kept pace with her as she walked briskly towards their destination, but as they got closer, he paused, putting a hand on her arm.

"Like I said, there's no way to be sure that we're right about what's going on."

Margo studied his face, wishing she had Eliot's powers of understanding Quentin Coldwater's mood swings. "Okay, but... but if it doesn't work, you know we'll keep trying, right?"

Quentin nodded and waved a hand in front of him, dismissing that. "Yeah, no. I know that. It's not - okay, the thing is, I'm not going to cast this spell on him unless he agrees to it."

Margo narrowed her eyes at him. "That's very _noble_, Quentin, but Eliot's being a total prick about this. There's no way he agrees."

"If we explain it to him..." Quentin said, trailing off as he looked into Margo's eyes. She wondered what her expression was doing. Her feelings were jumping all over the place.

"If we explain it to him," she repeated, striving for patience, "he'll throw a hissy fit and say something hurtful."

Quentin's jaw was set in a way that Margo recognized, and she sighed, bringing a hand up to rub at the headache forming between her eyebrows. "Okay, Quentin. You're leading this show, I'm here for you whatever you want to do."

Quentin laughed, utterly without humor. "There is nothing about this that even _approaches_ what I _want_ to do. What I want is to have Eliot back. What I _need_ is to make sure he can forgive me at the end of this."

They began walking again, towards the council chambers, and Margo studied him sidelong as they made their way down the hallway. "What about you?" she asked.

"What about me?"

"Will _you_ be able to forgive _him_ for all of this?"

Quentin didn't insult her intelligence by reminding her that this wasn't Eliot's fault. She knew he understood her perfectly. Just because magic was messing with Eliot didn't make it suck any less. The way he'd been acting towards Quentin wasn't something to be brushed off lightly, no matter the extenuating circumstances. Quentin paused for a moment, and Margo, still peering at him out of the corner of her eye, saw his jaw tick once, before he let out a breath of air and answered. "The truth is, Margo, I'd forgive him anything. Always. But I'm not saying it'll be easy."

When they entered the council chambers, it was to find Eliot, Tick, and Josh all going over some meeting notes, their conversation drifting from official to personal as the tension of a long afternoon meeting fell away. They all looked up as the door banged open, and Margo's eyes moved intently to Eliot's face. She saw his eyes narrow at the sight of Quentin, something defensive and annoyed instantly tightening his spine. She tried not to glare at him, feeling her protective instincts flare up inside of her. Whenever Eliot looked at Quentin like that, she had the bizarre desire to stand in front of him and defend him from all harm.

"Eliot," Quentin said. His voice was even, polite, and almost business-like, and Eliot's posture relaxed minutely.

"Quentin," he replied. "We were just wrapping this up, so - "

"Stay," Margo said, "We've got to talk to you about something."

"Is this another ambush about my feelings, because - "

"We think we've figured it out," Quentin interrupted, raising his voice against Eliot's dismissive words.

"Oh shit, really?" Josh said, sounding excited. He grinned at Margo, obvious relief on his face. "That's great."

"El, did you perhaps drink some sort of a calming tea or mysterious potion, a few weeks back?" Margo said. She crossed her arms and tapped a foot against the stone floor, studying his expression even more intensely, and - there. Yes. She saw the twitch of Eliot's lips, the way his eyes slid from Quentin over to her, before darting quickly away, towards -

"Oh, yes. I gave him a calming potion a while back," Tick said, expression calm.

"What?" Quentin said. "You _did_? Seriously?"

Tick's eyebrows came together. "Well - yes. He was dreadfully upset and I thought it might help him if..."

Eliot took a step forward and clapped a suspiciously rough hand on Tick's shoulder. "That's enough, Tick."

"I - I'm sorry, is there a problem?" Tick said. "You _did_ drink it, I recall, we were in the throne room, and - "

"It doesn't matter," Eliot said, his tone brooking no argument. He wasn't looking at Tick, he was looking at Quentin. Margo swung her glance in Q's direction and saw a look of relief and hope on his face. This was the proof, then. They'd been right about the problem, and they already had the solution. The only issue was Eliot himself.

"Did you?" Margo demanded, turning back towards Eliot, feeling somewhat horrified. "Did you take some mind-altering potion from Tick?"

Eliot's eyes were darting all over the room, between Tick, who looked anxious and confused, over to Q, and then back to her.

"I - yes, but that's not - "

"Holy _shit_," Margo interrupted. She could see that Quentin wanted to say something, and she realized she should probably let him talk, but her anger was bubbling out of her, fresh and almost pleasurable, now that she had a target for her ire. "_What did you give him, you little cretin!" _

Tick blanched, and tap danced a few steps back, out of Margo's reach, and much to her annoyance, Quentin got in between them. "Margo, stop. It's not Tick's fault, the potion doesn't work on Children of Earth the way it does on Fillorians. He was trying to help."

"What did you do to him?" Margo demanded again. She didn't respond to Quentin directly, but she did stop moving forward, resigning herself to a icy glare.

"This is - this is not right," Tick said, nervously. "I gave him a calming potion, yes, but it should not - it was weeks ago. The effects should have worn off long ago. He was so frightened, I merely meant to - "

"Tick didn't do anything wrong," Eliot said, his jaw clenched so tightly that the words came out in a growl. Margo felt the anger inside herself, bouncing all over, trying again to find the right target.

"You didn't think to mention this," she said, staring Eliot down. "All this time, when every person in your life that's supposed to matter to you _told_ you that you were acting strangely - you didn't think to mention that you took some fucked up mystery potion?! From _Tick_?!"

"I - ah, I believe I resent the implication behind your tone," Tick said, and Margo's vision flashed red.

"I wouldn't," Josh said mildly, putting a hand on Tick's shoulder and pulling him back, before Margo could actually literally murder him. "It's not the time."

"Eliot's right," Quentin said, and Margo turned back in time to see Eliot shoot him an incredulous and somewhat grateful look. "Tick didn't do anything wrong, he was trying to calm Eliot down when he was panicking over my safety."

"The kidnapping thing," Josh said, snapping his fingers and looking pleased with himself for figuring it out. "So, Tick gave something to Eliot to settle his nerves, but it went wrong - "

"Exactly," Quentin said, nodding and smiling at Josh. It was still a tight, strained, unnatural smile, but Margo was glad to see him making an effort. "So, Eliot, if you'll just allow me - "

"No," Eliot said, taking a step back, away from the group of them. Margo and Quentin both took a step forward at the same time, magnetized as always to Eliot's commanding presence. "No, nobody's doing anything to me. You can all just fuck off with this whole rescue operation. I'm not in need of saving, thank you very much."

"But Eliot," Margo said. The anger was still writhing around inside of her, but she tried to take on a reasonable, soothing sort of demeanor as she took another cautious step towards Eliot. "Someone already _did_ something to you. Quentin's just saying we could reverse - "

_"There's nothing to reverse!_" Eliot shouted, his eyes wide and panicked. Quentin flinched slightly and took a tiny shuffling step closer to Margo. "I'm not in love with you, Quentin. I don't _want_ you. You mean nothing to me. It's over. It's in the past. What the fuck gives you the right to try and force me to change my mind?"

"I don't want to force anything - " Quentin started. He had gone as white as a sheet at Eliot's outburst, and Margo felt that urge to run in front of him and shield him from Eliot's glare.

But Eliot wasn't done. Ignoring Q's attempts to interject, he continued - "After everything - _everything_ \- we've all been through," he said, his voice getting high and his hand sweeping across the room to encompass Quentin, Margo, Josh, and even Tick - "don't you think I have the right to my own fucking autonomy? Don't you think I've had enough of being manipulated and _trapped_ into relationships with people I never wanted? Or people who never even fucking - _existed in the first place_?"

The anger inside of Margo was warping, twisting into a terrible, heart-rending sympathy for Eliot even as she ached to defend Quentin. She was grateful Fen wasn't here to witness this less-than-flattering interpretation of their arranged marriage. And the other thing - was it a reference to Mike, who had been possessed the entire time they'd known each other, or to the phantom memory of Arielle, the woman that Q and Eliot had told Margo so much about? Maybe it was both. And maybe Eliot had a point - his ability to choose his partners with informed consent had been severely lacking for most of his adult life. What did that say about their fucked up lives that Eliot had never had a single romantic partnership that hadn't involved serious trauma? Even Q was no exception to the rule, unfortunately.

"Eliot," Quentin said, when the ringing echo of Eliot's shouts had faded from the room. His voice was choked with barely repressed tears. "I'm just asking you - "

"You're done asking me for shit, Quentin," Eliot said, and he snapped his glare from Quentin over to Margo, pointing an accusing finger directly at her. "And I'm done excusing your bullshit, too. You want to take his side, fine. But no more playing the middle."

Before Margo could decide whether to deck him in the face or beg for his forgiveness, Eliot had turned on his heels and stormed out of the room.

"Fuck," Josh said, sounding more shocked than horrified. "That was - "

Quentin was breathing deeply, his eyes blinking furiously. Margo could tell he was on the verge of tears, and turned to him, pulling him into a hug without thinking about it. Quentin returned the embrace immediately, his arms tight around her. For the first time, Margo tried to imagine how she would feel if Eliot looked at her like she didn't matter. Or if Fen suddenly decided she was done with her, or if Josh said the words 'I'm not in love with you,' right to her face, without a hint of remorse. She shivered and held Quentin tighter.

"I need to go after him," Quentin said, words wavering with tears.

"I know," Margo said. "But let's just - let's give him a minute. Give _yourself_ a minute, okay?"

She half expected Quentin to protest, but he didn't. He just stood there and let himself be held, trembling, his face pressed hard into Margo's shoulder. Behind Q, Margo caught a flicker of movement and watched as Tick attempted a surreptitious escape. Josh had noticed too, and he raised an eyebrow at Margo, wondering if he should follow. Margo gave him a minute shake of the head, and rubbed one of her hands up Q's back in a somewhat clumsy attempt at comfort. Such was her grief for Quentin that she was wiling to let Tick get away, for the time being. There would be hell to pay later, but right now, she was exactly where she needed to be.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spells are cast, hearts are mended, difficult conversations are had.

**QUENTIN**

Quentin gave himself twenty minutes before going after Eliot to put an end to this once and for all.

He was easy to find - Eliot had gone straight back to their bedroom, the one that Quentin had quietly vacated without being asked, three weeks earlier. He decided to take it as an encouraging sign. If Eliot really didn't want to talk to anyone, surely he would have done more to hide his whereabouts.

"El, please just listen to me," Quentin said without preamble, as he entered the room and saw Eliot sitting on the edge of the bed, hands tugging through his hair in agitation. It was a direct continuation of their conversation in the counsel chambers, picked up as if not a moment had passed.

"No, I don't think I will," Eliot growled, his fists tightening in his hair. "Can you not take a goddamn hint, Quentin? Can you not leave me alone for five fucking seconds?"

"We found a way to reverse the effects," Quentin said, waving the piece of paper in his hand somewhat pathetically. Eliot stared at him, unimpressed, and Q set the piece of paper down on a nearby table. "We found a way to fix you - won't you just let me try?" He could hear the note of pleading in his own voice, and knew Eliot would hate it.

Sure enough, Eliot snapped his eyes up to stare at Quentin for a moment, before he scoffed and looked away. "I know my own mind. I'm not - I can't be - you can't force me." Quentin hadn't seen him lose his eloquence like that in a long time. He stared at him for a long moment, blinking, trying to figure out how to respond, but Eliot spoke again before he got the chance. "Are you going to respect my wishes and go the fuck away, or am I going to have to find somewhere else?"

Even knowing everything he knew, it still cut Quentin to the quick to see that look of anger in Eliot's eyes, lacking even the shadow of affection.

"Can you not accept the fact that you might be wrong about this?" Quentin asked, trying for firmness and falling a bit short. He felt like begging, but knew Eliot would be unmoved.

"This isn't a fucking _ego _thing, Quentin! I'm not afraid of being wrong! I took the damn potion, yes, but I'm not _drugged_! I'm just fucking done with you. And you know what? I'm done with this, too." He stood up and took a single step towards Quentin, clearly intending to storm out of the room before Q could trap him into a longer conversation. Q acted somewhat instinctively, feeling wretched and guilty before he'd even finished performing the simple tuts. A shimmering force-field appeared in front of Eliot for a moment, and then vanished, leaving no visible sign of the spell.

Eliot, his momentum carrying forward, walked right into it. It shunted him back, somewhat gently, but his legs hit the bed, forcing him to sit down abruptly. "What the fuck?" he snarled, standing and reaching a hand out to feel the wards.

"It's just - " Q started, furious at himself for the waver in his voice. "I'll drop it in a second, I just need you to _listen to me_."

"You're fucking crazy," Eliot spat, raising his hands to sight at the spell through his fingers. He narrowed his eyes, clearly working out how to break it.

"Please, Eliot. _Please_. Not for me, but for yourself. If there's even a chance that I'm right about this, don't you want to know?"

Eliot glared at him again, but Quentin thought he saw a flicker of unease on his face. He sighed, dropping one hand to scrub harshly against his face. He sat down again on the bed, an ungraceful and exhausted movement entirely unlike him.

"This is a little desperate, don't you think?" Eliot said. Abruptly, the anger in his tone had leeched almost entirely way. He was still agitated, but he'd modulated his voice, taking on a performative level of mild irritation, with a touch of pity mixed in for good measure. He poked at the wards from where he was sitting. "You had someone's help with this, didn't you?" he said, and Quentin flinched at the not-so-subtle dig at his magical abilities.

"Julia lent me a hand, yes," Quentin said, fighting to keep the waver from his voice.

"Oh Christ, Quentin, you've roped her into this too? Look, I'm _sorry_ I hurt you, okay, but it's extraordinarily fucked up to hold your ex _hostage, _you do know that, right?"

"You're not my ex," Quentin said.

"You're in _denial_."

"Okay, just - shut up for a second," Quentin said. It was really hard to focus when Eliot was looking at him like that, and talking to him like he was an irritating interruption to his day, if not worse. "The spell I'm about to do is just going to remove the affects from the potion you drank. If you're really not under the influence of anything, then it's not going to hurt you."

He picked the sheet of paper up off of the bedside table where he'd set it earlier, and handed it through the wards to Eliot, who took it, rolling his eyes as he glanced it over. "I'm telling you, this isn't going to do anything. I'm sorry, but I just don't feel the way I used to."

"Just - humor me, okay? Look over the circumstances. Tell me if anything gives you pause."

Eliot sighed, and glanced at the spell. "The thing is, I just don't want you to be disappointed when nothing happens and you realize you've been wasting everyone's time."

"You let me worry about that," Quentin said, throat tight. He held his hand out for the paper. Eliot gave it one last glance, then handed it over. Q had to pass his hand through the force-field to grab the paper, because Eliot's hand couldn't pass through from his direction. Q felt a bit guilty about the trap, but he knew Eliot would forgive him once this was over.

The spell itself was a simple one, but Q hesitated for a long moment as he glanced over the circumstances. There was a lump in his throat. Selfishly, he _really _did not want to say what he was about to say.

"El. I'm not going to perform magic on you without your consent."

Eliot narrowed his eyes at him, as if waiting for a caveat. Q swallowed. He didn't want to cry again. He'd been doing quite enough of that lately, and being vulnerable in front of Eliot right now was about the last thing either of them needed. He coughed, and spoke again. "I showed you the spell work, so you'd realize that if nothing's wrong with you, if you're right and the potion didn't change anything... then this magic will be harmless. But even so, if you tell me no, I'll let you go. I'll drop the shield and let you walk away and - and I won't bother you about this anymore."

Q was looking down at the floor while he spoke, the effort of keeping his voice steady and clear costing him everything. When there was only silence from the bed, he chanced a look at Eliot. His heart thudded, heavy in his chest. There was an expression on Eliot's face that allowed the small flicker of persistent belief in his chest to flare up into a bonfire of hope. It wasn't love, in Eliot's eyes. But it was something. It was - doubt, maybe. Or - guilt. A sense of wondering, curiosity. Bravery in the face of fear.

"You believe that drinking that potion fucked with my head," Eliot said quietly, his eyes moving all over Q's face, as if looking for answers. "I can't believe that. I can't believe that I haven't been in control these past few weeks. It's too much."

Q swallowed, throat tight. "If you were really so sure of that, you'd have no problem letting me do this. You know. You're say you're not afraid, but you are. You're terrified, because you _know_."

Eliot looked at him for another long moment, and then sighed, his shoulders slumping. "I can't let myself think that I might - that everything I believe about myself right now might be some sort of manipulation. I don't _feel_ that. I - I don't want to be wrong about this. I don't know if I could take it, Quentin."

"El - "

But Eliot wasn't done. He put a hand up, and continued, his tone firming into something more definite. "But I do remember. I remember what it was to trust you more than anything. And you showed me the circumstances. I know it won't hurt me." He paused for a long moment, and Quentin watched with greedy eyes as Eliot raised a hand to his mouth, running a finger along his lower lip in thought. "So... do it. Do the spell, and we can just go from there."

Quentin wanted to smile, and thank Eliot, wanted to express to him exactly how much this small leap of faith meant to him. But the words would be lost to Eliot in this condition - he knew that the man in front of him wasn't in a place where he could receive his love or gratitude. He set the piece of paper down gingerly on the dresser, and then raised his hands. Eliot was sitting up straight, his back rigid and his face frozen into an expressionless mask. Q took a deep breath, and imagined it, the way Eliot's expression would shift, the way the love would pour back into him and wash away everything awful about these past few weeks. The magic flowed through him easily, more easily than almost anything he'd ever cast. This was love magic. This was a bridge back to Eliot. He felt it as the magic took hold, tugging energy directly from his own chest, his own heart and soul. It swirled through him and attached itself to Eliot, making his skin glow with a shimmering light.

It took only moments. Q faced Eliot, where he still sat on the edge of their bed. He let the last of the magic course from his chest, down his arms and out his fingers, and then - his arms dropped. He couldn't take his eyes away from Eliot, whose own eyes had slipped shut as the spell had begun its work.

Quentin watched the truth settle over Eliot in waves. First, his tension fell away, leaving polite confusion in its wake as he blinked open his eyes, looking at Quentin as if asking for answers. And then - a twitch, Eliot's finger jerking where it rested against his own knee. His forehead scrunched together, his mouth dropped open slowly, and his eyes - 

"Oh. Fuck," he said.

"Hey." Quentin's voice cracked over the single syllable.

Eliot blinked at him again, his eyes darting all over, unsettled and slightly panicked. "I think I'm going to throw up."

"Welcome back," Quentin said. His hands were shaking and he could feel water gathering in the corners of his eyes. Eliot _did_ look sick, his skin so pale it was almost grey. He swallowed a few times, then darted a tongue out to lick his dry lips, like he was trying to remember the taste of something.

"What - happened?" Eliot asked, looking breathtakingly pathetic and confused. His eyes were still darting all over Quentin's face like he was seeing him for the first time.

Q swallowed, and heard the sound of it loud in the silent room. "Eliot. You were - um. Do you not - not - remember?"

Eliot blinked at him a few more times, his pallid face slack and uncomprehending, and then - Q could see it, the moment it hit him.

"Oh _God_," Eliot said, meeting Q's eyes in horror. "What did I _do_?"

"Hey," Quentin said, going for soothing. "It's okay, El. It wasn't really - I mean, I know it wasn't your fault."

Eliot stood, a jerky, uncertain movement, and took a quick step in Quentin's direction. But then he froze, his face scrunched up, fists clenched tightly at his sides. "I needed a clear head," he said slowly. "I was losing my mind and I had - I had to do something about it. To save you." He looked up at Quentin, his eyes wide and wet. "I didn't - the potion must have - "

"I know, Eliot," Quentin said. "I get it. You didn't intend for this to happen. It's over now, it's - "

"I broke up with you," Eliot said, the words very precise. "I meant it, I felt it - I didn't - oh God. I didn't _love_ you, Quentin."

Even now, the words stung, a sharp lance against Quentin's shaky heart. But the look on Eliot's face was - well, Quentin felt bad about it, but the obvious devastation on Eliot's face was comforting. It was proof. Proof that Quentin wished he didn't need, but he supposed he was allowed to require reassurance right now, all things considered.

"How could I have felt like that?" Eliot said, his tone turning wondering. He took another step in Quentin's direction and then came up against the edge of the wards, his lips compressing hard as he felt at the edges of the magic with his hands.

"Oh, shit," Q said. "Fuck, sorry. Here - " he moved his hands through the tuts quickly, dropping the wards before Eliot could even say another word. "I'm really sorry I - "

"You had to," Eliot said, shaking his head. "Thank God you did, Q."

Quentin closed his eyes, ridiculously comforted to hear Eliot call him by the shortened name. "I'm still sorry, I shouldn't have trapped you - "

"Don't," Eliot said. The ward was down but he hadn't made any move to step closer to Quentin. "Don't apologize to me. For this or for literally anything ever again. I'm - " he paused, his face twisting into a mask of abject devastation. "You were right," he said, his throat tight around the words. "You were right, I'm so fucked up over this, Q. I'm so sorry. I'm - "

"It's not your fault," Q repeated. "Can I..." he made an abortive little gesture towards Eliot. His touch hadn't been welcome in weeks, and even though he knew Eliot hadn't been himself for any of that, he still felt oddly unsure.

Eliot's mouth dropped open in apparent horror at his hesitation. "_Fuck_," he sobbed, taking quick, long strides to Q and grabbing his shoulders. "I love you. I'm _sorry_. I love you." He pulled Q tight against him, and Q let himself go limp. Eliot caught him, cradling him against his chest like something precious. Eliot was crying. It had started from nowhere, no buildup or warning. He'd gone from zero to one hundred, shaking violently, and he just kept saying it again and again, a balm to Q's battered soul - _I love you, I love you, I love you_.

"I know," Quentin said, and it was mostly the truth.

Eliot pulled back, his face wet with tears, eyes bright and bloodshot and desperate. "Do you? God, Q, I - I'll never stop hating myself for this. I'll spend the rest of our lives trying to make it up to you, if you can even stand to forgive me, and - "

"You're forgiven," Q said immediately. He felt brittle, like Eliot's touch was the only thing keeping him from shattering apart.

"I don't deserve that - "

"I don't give a shit about what you deserve, or about what I deserve, or any of the rest of it," Quentin said. "The only thing keeping me going these last couple of weeks was the knowledge that it wasn't real." He leveled Eliot with a look that he hoped was severe without veering into a glare. "Was it? Did you mean any of the shit you've said to me recently?"

Eliot's face drained of what little color had been left. "No. No. Not ever."

"Okay, then let's forget about it," Q said, and tilted up to kiss him.

It was an avoidance tactic, Quentin was well aware. And he was sure that Eliot would figure that out as well, once he managed to calm down. But it was an undeniably _effective_ avoidance tactic, as it turned out. Instantly, Eliot was shuddering and gasping and trying to devour him, his arms tight around Q, the fingers of one hand pressing almost too hard into his back, his other hand tangling in Q's hair to brace his neck against the intensity of his lips, tongue pressed deep into Quentin's mouth.

It felt indescribably good, and Quentin heard himself let out a moan of relief, getting his own hands up and into Eliot's hair. He hadn't been able to touch him in weeks, and he felt like a starving man at a feast, the feel of Eliot's mouth against his, the wet slide, the warmth of him, shooting down to Q's stomach in a pool of needy, frantic wanting. He needed Eliot closer - all of him - right now - right _now_, why were they dressed, he needed to feel skin against him - he needed - "God, El," he tried to say against Eliot's lips. The sound was muffled and warped, but Eliot groaned in response, one of his hands sliding down to yank at Q's hip, pull them flush together - _Fuck_. He hadn't let himself think much about sex recently. There had been plenty of other things to be worried about. But now, they were barreling towards the point of no return at a pace Q would have found embarrassing, if he hadn't had clear evidence that Eliot was in the same exact condition.

At some indeterminate point, Q finally had to break away to gasp a breath, but Eliot didn't stop, just fell further into him and started sucking and biting at his neck. He was leaving marks, but Quentin was far from minding that - he _wanted_ it, in fact, wanted to be branded with Eliot's mouth, wanted the agony of loss to be replaced with the sharp evidence of belonging. "Q," Eliot gasped into the skin behind Quentin's ear. "God, I missed you. I fucking missed you."

Without warning, a brief spark of icy grief darted through Q's chest, shocking him suddenly out of his ardor.

He'd thought that this was all he wanted, the feel of Eliot, desperate and loving and _wanting him_ beyond all shadow of a doubt. He'd thought this would clear away the lingering feeling of abject loneliness he'd been forced to endure over the past couple of weeks. But Eliot's words, the broken murmur -_ I fucking missed you_ \- pressed into his pulse... it wasn't comforting after all.

Because Eliot _hadn't_ missed him. Eliot hadn't loved him, not really, for the past three weeks. _Quentin_ was the one who had been missing something, or at least he was the one who had been aware of it, been forced to live through that forest of pain and worry. Eliot was suffering now, sure, but he hadn't been, this whole time. And that was really the goddamn problem, wasn't it?

He tried to be gentle when he pulled back from Eliot. He didn't want Eliot to feel it like a rejection. Even after everything, Q felt absolutely no desire to retaliate. He'd spare Eliot the pain he himself had gone through, at any cost. Eliot, hyper-aware of Q's body language as always, stopped kissing him the second he felt Quentin go tense, pulling away almost before Q had to move himself. "Too much?" he asked, rough. His eyes were still bright with tears, his mouth red and swollen.

Quentin didn't know how to answer that. Too much? Not enough? Somehow the answer was both at the same time.

"Tell me what you want, Q," Eliot said. Begged. "Anything. I'll do anything."

"I think..." Quentin said, wretched. "I think - I don't know, I might need time, El."

Eliot shrunk back another step, sitting down on the edge of the bed a bit too quickly, like his legs wouldn't hold him up. "Please don't. Please don't say that."

Quentin sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. That was not fair, and Eliot seemed to realize it too, because after a brief pause he spoke again, his voice high and pained. "Shit. Sorry. No, I didn't... um, I didn't mean to. If you need time and... and space, that's more than fair, Q. Whatever you need. Just tell me, and I'll do it."

Eliot was looking at Q like he was the sun, the sky, and the stars, and like the words he'd just said were literally the most difficult he'd ever uttered.

The wretched feeling grew. "God, this is..." Q started, then bit off, frustrated. "I don't know what to do. I know you'd never hurt me on purpose, but you - you _did_. Badly. And at the same time the only thing I want right now is for you to hold me and make me feel better."

"I don't know what to do, either," Eliot said. "If I could take it back..."

"I know," Quentin said, taking a cautious step towards the bed.

"I'm the disease and the cure," Eliot said. It wasn't a quip. Eliot, whose primary coping mechanism would always be humor and deflection, seemed utterly incapable of even the laziest attempt. "I'm the problem and the sorry fucking excuse for a solution. You deserve so much better than - "

"I told you I don't want to play the goddamn who-deserves-what game, Eliot. Your self-deprecation isn't _helping_ me, okay?"

Eliot blinked at him and clenched his jaw. "Okay," he said finally. He looked small, curled in on himself like he was afraid, like every word Q spoke was a physical blow.

"And I'm fully aware I'm being a hypocrite," Quentin said, sighing and crossing the room to sit next to Eliot. He held a hand out to him and Eliot grasped it tight, like a lifeline. "I know I've plagued you with my self-doubt and self-recrimination, and you've had to weather that storm. I get it now, how hard it must be - "

"There's nothing I wouldn't do for you," Eliot interrupted, hasty. "I don't care, you can be as insecure as you want, I'll just keep telling you I love you, I'll keep telling you that forever. I promise."

"You can't promise me that," Quentin said.

Eliot jerked, his hand convulsing against Q's. "What?"

"You - you've said that before, and then you went and - you broke your word. You - I think that's the thing that I'm struggling with the most, here. You've sworn to me so many times that you'd never lose patience with me, that you'd stay by my side and talk me out of my stupid neuroses as often as I needed you to. And then you - "

"If I had known, Q, if I had known what was going to happen? I _never_ would have - "

"But you _did_, Eliot," Quentin said. "You _did_, and right now it's hard to imagine ever trusting you again - "

"God," Eliot said. "God, Q, I - I thought I was helping you - I - I was so stupid, but you _know_ I - how can you doubt that - " he cut himself off, frustrated. "Quentin," he started again, after Q let him have the space to think for a few moments. "Quentin, I'm yours. I belong to you. Whatever you want, or need from me, for the rest of our lives, it's yours. I know I've told you that before, and I know you can't believe me right now. Maybe - maybe you'll never believe me again, I don't know. But I'll never stop trying. I'll prove it to you, even if it takes me until the day I die."

"Fuck," Quentin said. "I don't even know what to say to that. I don't know where to start."

Eliot let out a huff of air, like he was unraveling. "Maybe just. Start with right now, Q. What do you want? Do you want me to..." he swallowed hard, and Quentin knew he was making an extraordinary effort to keep his voice even. "Do you want me to leave?"

"No."

The answer came easily, without thought. Quentin never wanted Eliot to leave. Not even when he probably _should_ want that.

"Okay," Eliot said, and when Q chanced a glance at him, he saw that Eliot was crying again. "Do you want to keep talking about this?"

"No. Not right now."

"Do you want - maybe do you want to get some sleep?" Seemingly unable to help himself, Eliot lifted a hand and ran a finger down Q's cheek, over to his jaw, the rough stubble of a few days without a shave catching against his fingers. Quentin knew he looked awful, dark circles under his eyes, his hair tangled and in need of a wash. Despite his best efforts, he really wasn't at his best.

"I - Yes. Sleep would be good," he said, quiet.

And so that's what they did, undressing and slipping into their over-sized bed with too much emotional exhaustion to feel uncertain about nudity. In the dark, with the curtains drawn and the candles out, it was easier to let Eliot touch him. They didn't have sex, just curled together in the center of the bed, with caverns of space on either side of them. Eliot tested the waters with a gentle kiss to the back of Q's neck as they spooned, and Quentin felt his muscles relax into it. Eliot kept kissing him, breathing him in deep, but didn't escalate it any further. Quentin knew Eliot was crying, could feel the occasional wetness of it against the back of his neck, the uneven, shaky breaths. Q had cried so often in the last couple of weeks that he too tired for it now. He just lay there, and decided to let himself be comforted. He was exhausted. Every bone and muscle in his body ached, and Eliot's arms were so warm and firm. Even with everything still so broken between them, it didn't take long for Q to fall asleep.

* * *

In the morning, Q woke to the feeling of Eliot's arms still wrapped around him, tight and nearly restrictive. It was the most comfortable he'd felt in a long time. Somewhere in his sleep, his mind had ordered through his thoughts, and he'd come to a decision without even realizing he'd been looking for one. There was something like clarity within him, that sudden knowing that felt like an epiphany. He held the idea up under scrutiny and found that it bore up, even when tested against his battered heart and exhausted mind.

The thing was, he forgave Eliot. He really did. And he knew Eliot loved him.

The trick was going to be in explaining himself to the man lying next to him, in a way he would understand. But first, he needed a shower. And food. And they needed to let everyone know that the spell had worked. Although, he was sure Margo, Fen, and Josh had figured that out, given that neither of them had come out of their bedroom.

He shifted, starting to move out of Eliot's arms. In his sleep, Eliot made a small noise of protest and tugged Quentin back into his chest, the way he often did when Q tried to leave their bed in the morning before Eliot was awake. But after a second, Eliot came fully awake and remembered, and his body went rigid for a moment before he loosened his grip and let Quentin pull away from him. "Sorry," Eliot said. He sounded wrecked, the kind of exhausted that's more emotional than physical.

"Don't apologize," Quentin said, and he perched himself on the edge of the bed, running a hand through Eliot's hair and along his jaw. Eliot's eyes widened at the touch, and his mouth dropped slightly open, his breathing sounding loud in the silent room. "I need to go send a note to Jules, tell her the madness is over."

Eliot's eyes shuttered at that, his mouth closing hard over a swallow. "Yeah. Yeah, okay, I'll go tell Margo. And then..." he hesitated, but Quentin waited him out, and eventually he gave a small nod, like he was deciding something. "We tell our friends that I'm - I'm not fucking pod-person Eliot anymore, and we eat breakfast, and then we meet back here. To talk."

"Very sensible," Quentin said. He was feeling light with the promise of that conversation, because while he knew it was going to suck in some ways, he also felt good about what he had to say, and about the outcome at the end. Refusing to overthink it, he leaned over and kissed Eliot's forehead and then left the room before Eliot could respond.

* * *

There were a lot of relieved hugs from the Fillorian crowd, and Q's messenger bunny to Julia and Alice was returned almost immediately, the bunny's low croaks repeating a message of _\- Yay! Love you both_ \- over and over again until Q deposited the rabbit back in the mail room for later use.

When they were back in their room, a somewhat awkward silence descended over both of them. Q let it linger for a long moment, before deciding that being awkward around Eliot was pointless and stupid. He took a fortifying breath, and reached out for Eliot's hand, tugging him so they could sit on the edge of the bed together. "So," he said, ready to try, however clumsily, to tell Eliot what he'd decided.

"Wait," Eliot said. "Can I - just, Q, before you say anything, I want to... I want to start. Is that okay?"

Quentin pressed his lips together, hard, but then nodded. Eliot's fingers tightened on his hand for a moment.

"There are so many things I want to say to you," Eliot began, his voice low and fervent. "But first, I - Quentin. Thank you so much."

Q blinked at that. Apologies he was prepared for, but gratitude seemed a little out of place. "For what?"

Eliot huffed out a breath, dropping Q's hand so he could rub the heels of his palms into his eye sockets for a moment. He dropped the hands, gripping Q's once again without looking. "You fought for us," he finally said, his voice choked. "You fought for us when I wouldn't. I'm so grateful, Q. Thank you for not giving up on me."

"Never," Quentin said, automatically. "I'd never give up on you, El."

"I tried my hardest to convince you I didn't want you," Eliot said. "I can't even imagine how that must have felt - but you never doubted, not for a second."

It was Quentin's turn to let out a huff of air, incredulous. "Of course I doubted."

Eliot's fingers squeezed down on Quentin's hand, hard. "You did?"

"You've met me, haven't you?" Quentin said, trying for a joke and landing short.

Eliot made a sound in the back of his throat and Quentin looked up at him to see that he'd started crying again.

"I'm sorry," Quentin said, an automatic reflex. "It's okay - really, El."

"It's not. It's _not_. I - I made you a promise, Q." Eliot buried his face in his hands, his breathing harsh in the otherwise quiet room.

"El," Q said, uncertain how to phrase what he needed to say. "The potion, it... it changed how you felt. But it felt natural to you while it was happening. Right?"

Eliot nodded miserably.

"And even though you'd asked me to marry you, you decided to end things with me, because you didn't love me anymore." Quentin's voice hardly wavered over the words, for which he was proud, but Eliot made another sound of distress and grabbed at Q's hand again.

"It wasn't real, Q. It wasn't real."

"I know," Q said, soothing. "But what I'm saying is - if it ever _was_ real, if you ever decided you didn't want - "

"_No_," Eliot interrupted, fierce. He turned to look at Quentin, something just shy of fury shining in his eyes. "Not ever. If I ever try and break up with you again, Quentin, it means something's fucking with my head. It could never be real."

"I _know_, El. That's not what I'm saying. Please just - let me, okay?"

Eliot nodded again, his face white. Q shuffled so he was facing Eliot head-on, and met his eye for a long moment, waiting for him to nod and focus in.

"What I'm saying is that _if_ you ever stopped loving me, I would want you to leave me."

"_Q_, what the _fuck_ \- "

Quentin's hand jumped to cover Eliot's mouth, leaving just his devastated eyes piercing forlornly into Quentin's own.

"I would never want you to stay with me out of obligation or because you didn't want to hurt me. If I ever stopped being what you wanted, I would want you to walk away." He paused, then went in for the kill. "Wouldn't you?"

Quentin felt Eliot's lips part against his palm, and heard him swallow, hard. He moved his hand away from Eliot's mouth and stared at him, trying to stay firm.

"I - want you to be happy," Eliot finally managed. "Always. Beyond anything else."

Quentin nodded, trying to smile. Eliot was clearly on the verge of tears. After a few seconds of silence, Eliot spoke again, the words wavering and more than a little scared. "What. Um. What exactly are you trying to say to me right now?"

Q blinked at him, and then widened his eyes when he realized what Eliot was asking - "Shit. No, I'm not - that's not what's happening, here." Eliot's eyes were still watery and his jaw was clenched tight against a quiver in his lower lip, so Q pressed on, gripping Eliot's shoulders with intensity. "I'm not saying my feelings have changed. I'm not saying they ever will. Okay? I _love_ you, Eliot. More than anything."

Eliot's eyes fluttered closed and his shoulders slumped. He swallowed a few times before opening eyes again and speaking softly. "Okay. Okay, I believe you. I don't understand it most of the time, why you would love me, but I trust you."

Quentin smiled, feeling something like relief swell in his chest. "Yes, _exactly_." And when Eliot just scrunched his eyebrows together in confusion, Q forced himself to keep speaking, trying to articulate the breakthrough he'd had early that morning.

"Okay, here's the thing - I knew something crazy was going on when you broke up with me, because I know you. And you were acting weird, and it all happened so suddenly, right?"

"And because the thought that I could ever stop loving you is _patently absurd_," Eliot added.

Quentin rolled his eyes, ridiculously pleased. "Yes, sure. That too. But - okay, you know how we've been talking in therapy about trusting ourselves to know what we want? And trusting each _other_ to recognize those wants?"

"Sure, yeah."

"_So_," Quentin said, proud of himself for his eloquence thus far. "Given the absurd parameters of the situation, you actually did the right thing."

Eliot stiffened, his clenched jaw popping open in shock. "How the fuck do you figure?"

"You made a mistake taking that potion, but it's not like you knew what the consequences were going to be. It was an accident. And then you didn't love me anymore, so instead of lying to me or lying to yourself, you were honest about your needs, and - "

"Okay, this analogy doesn't work even a little bit," Eliot said, sounding truly pissed off. "Because if we're supposed to _trust _each other, then you should have let it go, right? You should have trusted that I knew what I was doing. But you didn't do that. You fought for us, which was absolutely, 100%, the right thing to do."

"Right, but I'm trying to say that even though what happened was seriously fucked up, it's also proof that we've grown. That _you've_ grown. You could have just gone on staying with me because you'd already proposed. You could have decided to stay out of obligation, and then who knows how long we would have gone on, with you pretending to love me, and me getting increasingly insecure about your obvious decrease in attraction and affection, and - "

"But I - _left_ you, Q. In what universe am I supposed to pat myself on the back for that?"

"Why did you leave me?" Q asked, calm and controlled. "Did you do it because the thought of being with me was that abhorrent to you? Were you disgusted by me?"

Eliot's eyes widened and his nostrils flared. "No," he said. And then he cleared his throat. "No, it wasn't - I don't know, it's weird to remember feeling something so - so wrong. It's hard to access it, to understand exactly what I was feeling. But I didn't suddenly hate you, or anything. I just didn't - I didn't love you. And I didn't want to love you."

"Right, so you could have stayed with me out of obligation, and wound up making us both miserable in the process. But you _didn't_, because you've _grown_ \- "

"Grown from _what_, Q?" Eliot interrupted again, exasperated. "It's not like in the past I've stayed with a romantic partner because I felt indebted or trapped, and now this time around I've learned to _love myself_ or whatever the hell - "

"Okay, don't sneer," Q cut in. "And you're wrong, you _have_ stayed with someone out of obligation. You just said so yesterday."

"Not really the same situation, Q. There was magic fidelity shit going on when I married Fen, and the fate of multiple worlds - "

"Okay, fine, then what about us? The mosaic timeline."

Eliot's eyebrows shot up. "Tread lightly, Coldwater, because if you're about to suggest - "

Quentin groaned in frustration, tempted to slap his hand over Eliot's mouth again. "I know you loved me there, I know you weren't just staying out of obligation, but that doesn't change the fact that there _was_ an obligation, El. The mosaic. The quest. And then, after - after Ari died, there was the obligation of care, for me, and Teddy - and yes, you grew to love me, and I could never be anything other than grateful for that. But just because it worked out for the best doesn't mean you never felt trapped there. How could you not? You could have left, El, for your own sake, but you never - "

Q cut himself off this time, as he caught sight of Eliot's haunted, darkening eyes. "Grew to love you?" Eliot whispered, the words rough and catching in his throat. "Quentin, I was in love with you long before we ever ended up in that alternate timeline."

Okay, that shut him up. He swallowed, hard, against a lump in his throat. "Yeah?"

"You fucking knew that," Eliot snapped, without even a hint of tenderness. He looked furious, the anger directed not at Quentin, but inward.

"I guess maybe I didn't. At least not... not for sure," Q said, looking down at his hands. He shook his head, then brought his eyes back up to Eliot's. "We're getting off track."

"Q," Eliot said, then seemed to trip over whatever else he wanted to say. "_Q_," he repeated, sounding a little lost.

"The point is," Quentin said, taking a fortifying breath and reaching for Eliot's hands again. "The point is, the stuff you were saying, before you ran in here to get away from me yesterday... you weren't all wrong."

"I yelled at you. I yelled at Margo," Eliot said, the memory tightening in his jaw and the corners of his eyes. "I didn't mean - none of that shit was true."

"Sure it was," Quentin said, and brought a hand up to cup Eliot's cheek in a soothing gesture, cutting off Eliot's instinctive denial. "You've been through some shit. We both have. And from your perspective, I was trying to force you to be with me. I wasn't ready to listen to you yesterday, when you were saying all of that. Because - because I knew, if I could convince you to let me do the spell, you'd - I mean, I knew you'd react the way you've been reacting. I knew you'd be grateful that I pushed the issue."

Eliot nodded, turning his face to brush his lips against Quentin's palm. "So grateful. You have no idea."

"And so because I was so focused on the end goal of all of this, I wasn't thinking about things from your point of view."

"It wasn't my real point of view, though - " Eliot started, eyes imploring.

"I _know_. What I'm getting at is that you were in a really weird situation, trying to stay true to how you felt and what you knew you wanted. That's all any of us can do."

Eliot's expression was incredulous, but his eyes were still warm and aching and full of so much love. Quentin wasn't entirely sure he was getting through to Eliot, but maybe that was okay, for right now. He'd said what he needed to say, and hopefully it was enough that Eliot would believe his next words, the really important ones:

"You made a mistake, drinking that potion without knowing what it was. But I forgive you."

Eliot blinked at him. Swallowed. Blinked again, his eyes darting over Quentin's face like he was searching for a way into his mind. "How?"

"Because - because someone altered your brain chemistry without your consent. And it made you act out of character."

Eliot scoffed at that, some of the self-recrimination back in his eyes. "_Out of character._ Jesus, Q, I acted like a total prick."

"No arguments here. And that's out of character - "

"Is it?"

"What did I say about throwing yourself a pity party?" Quentin demanded, feeling a little stirring of anger himself. "You didn't know what that potion was going to do to you, okay? And neither did Tick, for what it's worth."

Eliot's jaw clenched so hard that Quentin could see the muscle jumping under his skin. "Tick - Tick is so fucking dead, Q, I'm going to kill him with my bare hands - "

"If it wasn't for him, we never would have gotten proof of what was wrong with you."

"If it wasn't for _him_, nothing would have been wrong with me to begin with! I was a goddamn mess and he _drugged_ me."

"He was trying to help," Quentin said. "Look, we can argue about that later, okay?" he waved his hand, dismissing Tick from the conversation. He wasn't sure himself how he felt. Blaming Tick would feel good, after all, but it wasn't a constructive use of his time or energy. All that mattered was making sure that he and Eliot were going to be okay. "Let's just get back to the part where I'm telling you I forgive you."

Eliot hissed out through his teeth, doing that thing again, where he scanned Quentin's face, searching for hidden truths. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure. Do you forgive me?"

"For _what_?" Eliot said, aghast. "You have nothing to be sorry for, I'm the one who fucked everything up."

"El, come on," Quentin said, cajoling. He brought his hand up to card through Eliot's hair, relishing in the freedom of it. Eliot's eyes flickered shut and his head dropped forward, pushing more firmly into Q's hand. _Like a cat_, Quentin thought, giddy with the simple pleasure of touch. "I pushed you," he continued. "You were afraid of this, and I forced the issue. I used magic to stop you from leaving."

"I could have left," Eliot said. It was hardly more than a whisper. "I knew how to get out of that trap. It would have taken some time, but I could have managed it."

"But you - you didn't. You stayed." The thought of it was making Quentin's chest heavy and hot with affection.

"You were right, Q. About all of it. I was - I was afraid to feel it again. Loving you. When I was - like that, when I wasn't _myself_, I could only remember how scary it was. It was like our relationship was a prison. Something I couldn't escape from, something that kept me locked down. To be so dependent on another person for happiness, it just seemed like torture to me. So I just didn't let myself think about it. I pushed it aside. I ignored the nagging voice in my head that kept trying to remind me that loving you was the best thing I've ever done."

"I'm sorry," Quentin said.

"Don't apologize. I'm serious, Q, don't. I'm only telling you this so you can understand exactly how I feel, here and now. Feeling the way I do about you is - it's terrifying, sure, but it's so fucking worth it. I can't really comprehend how I managed to forget that."

"Okay. So you forgive me for everything I did to get you back."

"Like I said, there's nothing to forgive," Eliot said. He reached a hand up and traced a finger along the side of Quentin's jaw. "But you should know by now that I'd forgive you anything."

Quentin swallowed. Swallowed again, hard. He tipped his head forward, forehead against Eliot's shoulder, and squeezed his burning eyes shut. Then Eliot spoke again, his voice wavering like he was still afraid. "And you really - you can really see past everything I said to you? You can really forgive me for the way I acted?"

"Absolutely." There was no need to think about it, even for a moment. A devious thought entered Quentin's mind. He thought about the little box he had hidden in the chest of drawers in the corner of their room. He'd placed it there several days before, when he knew Eliot was at lunch with Fen. But first... he lifted his head to look at Eliot, and blinked, trying for an expression of open innocence. "Can I have my ring back?"

Eliot gaped at him again. He seemed to be doing a lot of that.

"You - are you sure?" he repeated, his voice suddenly hoarse and small all at once.

"Why? Having second thoughts?"

"That's not funny," Eliot said. "Jesus. I was scared to bring it up, Q, I thought I'd have to - I don't know, do my penance before you'd ever... oh my God, you're a fucking miracle - how the hell are you so perfect?"

Quentin rolled his eyes, mostly to avoid crying again. "I'm far from that. But I do want to marry you, if the offer still stands."

Eliot stood and moved to the other side of the room, where a large ornate dresser contained only a small fraction of his considerable wardrobe. He fished in a small drawer that contained his jewelry, and came back with the ring. It was a smooth, worn band, with one bright sapphire set into. Subtle yet beautiful. Something Quentin could stand to wear on his finger without feeling too conspicuous.

He felt his throat go a bit dry when Eliot sat beside him on the bed again. Their first proposal had been lovely - an intimate, special moment that Quentin would treasure forever. But it had also been completely expected. They'd already talked about marriage, and Quentin had known from the way Eliot was acting, adorably nervous and excited, that it was coming, at least a few days before Eliot managed to pop the question. That proposal hadn't affirmed or reinforced anything about their relationship, because it represented what they both already knew to be true.

This time was no different, in many ways. Quentin knew, in his bones, in his blood, that Eliot loved him. He knew it so well that the simple truth of it had won out over decades of self-doubt and insecurity, over Eliot's previous rejections, over all of the trauma of their lives, both together and apart. But this time, he knew they were both craving the reassurance, and so he let himself want it - the sentimental proposal, the words and the affirmation. All that good, healthy communication stuff that he and Eliot had worked so hard to achieve.

"I thought - " Eliot started, and then cleared his throat, taking Quentin's hand. "I thought I'd said everything I wanted to say to you, the last time we did this." He swallowed. "I guess I have to accept that I'll never be able to find the words, Quentin. It breaks my heart sometimes that you can't just read my mind, and - and see it. What you are to me, how I feel about you. I've never met anyone so brave and generous and strong, and the fact that you could want me the way I want you, the fact that you've chosen to give your remarkable heart to me is the greatest gift and surprise I ever could have imagined."

Q took in a shuddering breath. He had suddenly realized he wasn't breathing. "Fuck. Okay. Um." And then he stood up, pulling his hand out of Eliot's and rushing to the chest to fish out the box. He turned back and saw Eliot's eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. He waited a beat, saw Eliot's eyes flicker down to the small box in his hands, and then his expression changed, his face going blank and slack with shock.

"You got to do it last time, so I wanted - I wanted a turn," Quentin said, not even trying to stop his voice from wavering.

"Oh my God," Eliot said, starting to smile.

Quentin came to stand in front of Eliot where he was still sitting on the end of the bed.

"I wanted you from the first moment I saw you," Quentin said, abruptly feeling more calm and composed than he could ever remember being. Eliot made a little sound in the back of his throat, like a laugh, but maybe a touch incredulous. "I'm serious. I saw you lying on top of that Brakebills sign, in that fucking vest, with the cigarette, and your _hair, _and all of it, and - I wanted you to have your way with me. It was - honestly, Eliot, as weird as this is going to sound, being attracted to you was un-fucking-believably liberating for me. I was coming out of this really dark place in my own mind, and I'd - I'd maybe given up on the idea of ever being happy, and even something as silly as a harmless attraction, or crush, or whatever, it was like my brain was telling me that I was allowed to have nice things."

Eliot was smiling at him now, big and bright and a little misty, but Quentin pushed on, still gripping the box tight in his hand. "It was uncomplicated. And obviously both of our lives got very _very_ complicated shortly thereafter, but through it all, you - you were like this fixed point in space for me. So much was out of my control, I was messing up so many things, and the world itself was just generally doing me no favors, but _you_ \- God, El, no matter what fucked up shit happened, or even the fucked up shit we did and said to one another, I always _knew_ that you'd be there for me. I always knew you'd have my back and be my friend, and - I'd never, not once in my entire _life_, had that kind of certainty before. I don't know how to express how grateful I am to you. You love me, you love me so unselfishly, you love me when I'm spiraling and when I'm steady and at every point in between. And that thing between us, that thing that started the moment I heard you say my name for the first time, it grows, and changes, and deepens, literally every day. I already know the joy of a lifetime with you, Eliot. We may be the only two people in the universe who get to come out on the other side of a partnership like that, and see what comes _next_. I'm so unbelievably happy that I get to have that with you, no matter what bullshit we have to face in the future. So."

He paused, took a deep breath, and smiled down at Eliot, who had tears in his eyes that he wasn't even trying to hide. Quentin got down on one knee, and Eliot made that little choked off laugh in the back of his throat again. "Eliot Waugh. Will you marry me?"

"_Yes_," Eliot said. Simple, sweet, reverent. Quentin slid the ring onto his finger, and stood. Eliot stood as well, sliding Q's ring back onto his hand where it belonged. They fell forward into each other, Q's face against Eliot's broad chest, Eliot's lips against Q's forehead. "When did you get the ring?" Eliot asked softly, carding shaking fingers through Q's hair.

"About a week ago," Quentin admitted quietly. He felt Eliot go tense all over, and then shudder, dropping his lips onto the top of Q's head, again and again.

"Jesus, Q, I - "

"Don't," Quentin said, squeezing his arms tighter around Eliot's waist. "We're good."

"I love you," Eliot said. "So much." He ducked lower, opened his mouth against Quentin's neck and closed his teeth on the skin there, too soft to be a real bite. Quentin scratched his hands down Eliot's back and then tucked his shirt up so he could stroke the skin of Eliot's lower back. Eliot shivered and shoved them closer together, his mouth dropping open. "God. Q. Fuck."

"I love it when you go post-verbal."

"'Fuck' is a word, Q. And grammar is often overrated," Eliot said, his lips vibrating against the sensitive skin under Quentin's jaw. "I'm the most eloquent motherfucker in the world, and you know it - "

But then Quentin was gripping him by the ears, hauling him forward and kissing him, and Eliot had no complaints at the interruption.

Q knew that there were more conversations to be had. He knew that he and Eliot were both fragile, and that a renewed proposal wasn't going to magically solve every one of their problems. But as he pushed Eliot backwards onto their bed, he made the conscious decision to stop worrying, at least for the time being. They'd overcome so many challenges in their time together. They'd fought for one another again and again, and this time had been no different. For all that the past few weeks had hurt him, he had come out on the other side feeling more confident than ever that he and Eliot could weather any storm.

"I can hear you thinking," Eliot said, lips hot and wet against his ear. "Which means I'm not doing my job correctly."

Quentin laughed and squirmed against him as Eliot devoted himself to attacking Quentin's neck with renewed vigor. One of Eliot's hands crept up under Quentin's shirt, and Q felt the cool metal of El's newly adorned ring against his skin, like a brand, a promise, a sacred truth. Like forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! I would love to hear what you think.


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